End this Java Bloatware Madness! – developers • The Register

End this Java Bloatware Madness! – developers

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By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Software, 4th June 2001 22:30 GMT

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JavaOne A petition calling for Sun to put Java on a diet has struck a chord with developers.

Java is several things, one of which is – or ought to be – a lean and mean run-time. But with the latest Java 1.4 Virtual Machine checking in at 40Mb, says developer Chris Kelly, who has called for Sun to hand over development of new APIs – the principal cause of the bloatware - to third parties. (Actually the VM is smaller than that).

"From a small, clean solution to '"write once, run anywhere', Java has become a bloated monster that risks to collapse under it's own weight," says Sven Rosiers, adding his name to the petition.

"The JDK can be large, but there should be an incrementally downloading JRE with small initial footprint to support consumers with low-speed connections. We need this to be able to effectively support Java in the browser," notes Bill Lipa.

"For J2SE, Sun should follow an approach not unlike J2ME: a small, clean core set of API's, extended on an as-needed basis with _optional_ "standard extensions".

Kelly himself is a developer of third party extensions himself, in the form of JConfig, so you could say he isn't exactly a disinterested party. But judging by the comments of fellow developers, he isn't alone.