Lava (time to fork Java?)
amiro
http://www.dzone.com/links/is_it_time_to_fork_java.html
Greg proposes a Java fork which would maintain compatibility with
existing Java6 code.
I am wondering if this is indeed a good time, and if it's even legally
possible to fork it without licensing issues.
I am thinking of a few reasons for the fork: the disappointing
progress with Java 7 (several features pushed back to Java 8, maybe
java 9/10..), the general frustration with the JCP process, and the
worrying dominance of the Java platform by a single organisation.
Do you think there is a valid case for a fork, is it even feasible,
and could it gain traction within the community?
What would be the licensing obstacles?
How could such a project be managed effectively?
Is there anything which could be improved in terms of the JCP, and
adding new features more quickly?
Here's an insteresting reaction post by someone called Sacha:
http://sacha.labourey.com/2010/10/04/time-to-fork-java-si-vis-pacem-para-bellum/
Personally, I like the idea of a few copyleft (GPL) forks starting up,
with the *hope* that the strongest fork could become embraced in a
nice fluffy, happy agreement. ;)
Any thoughts?
Jan Goyvaerts™
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Fabrizio Giudici
> Would the "forkers" be allowed to modify the language and VM, and
> still call it "Java" ?
>
about the same topic.
http://blog.eisele.net/2010/10/free-java-jcpnext-here-are-options.html
I'm pretty negative about that - it seems just bad timing. There are a
few individuals that are declaring the big failure of Oracle's
stewardship, and the past J1, and I'd first like to learn how they are
representative. I must also say that while I'm not satisfied by some
things that Oracle is doing (more precisely, things that it is not
doing), I don't understand how this comes after J1, where some light has
been shed upon strategies (Java 7 and 8) that have been very badly
managed by Sun, not Oracle, in the past two years (see e.g. Mario
Fusco's comments about the unfeasability of the Java 7 plans that were
made public one month ago). Now we have a roadmap till 2012. BTW, the
whole community is not representative, in the sense that there is no
formal democratic delegation model; in any case, I suppose JUGs are more
representative than individuals and I'd first like what are the feelings
in JUGs. For what I can say, and of course I'm _not_ representative too,
some JUGs and JUG leaders are more on the wait.
There is a positive note in one of the posts (can't remember the author,
the one who said "si vis pace para bellum"), that is the realistic
acknowledgement that the community alone can't sustain a fork of the JDK
(OpenOffice, but also GlassFish, NetBeans or other stuff are a totally
different thing - I think that people should really sit down and realize
first what's inside the VM). I was saying about that realistic
acknowledgment, in fact the guy proposes an alliance of the community
with the other vendors such as IBM, HP and so on for the forking and
creation of a foundation to manage the fork.
Now, you should only know how much this stinks of rotten italian
politics, where parties spend 90% of their time in moving on the
chessboard to gain an advantage point, and possibly damage the opposite
sides, and a mere 10% remains to govern the country. The results are not
pleasing: we just go nowhere. I've got a strong feeling that a
foundation managing Java, instead of being a neutral body supported by
the corporates, would be their hostage for their politics, with the
community playing the useful idiot - let's not forget that any corporate
plays the community friend when it needs and the (more or less)
benevolent dictator when it can. I think that the Oracle attitude change
from 2007 to 2010 explains this very well.
I'm usually very in favour of the "si vis pace para bellum" strategy,
generically speaking, but for preparing the war you need to create a
sustainable and reliable alliance of partners, which I don't see as
feasible. The only net result would be to upset Oracle and create a
break with the community, favouring the internal Oracle faction that is
opposing the community, and jeopardizing what could be achievable with
more patience. Not to say an explosion in cross-lawsuits, as if we there
weren't enough of them right now.
I think it makes more sense to closely follow Oracle as they pursue the
Java 7 milestone.
--
Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager
Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere."
java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici - www.tidalwave.it/people
Fabrizio...@tidalwave.it
Augusto Sellhorn
Also, why this instead of supporting Harmony instead?
On Oct 4, 3:01 pm, amiro <amirla...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's a link to an article by someone called Greg Luck.
>
> http://www.dzone.com/links/is_it_time_to_fork_java.html
>
> Greg proposes a Java fork which would maintain compatibility with
> existing Java6 code.
>
> I am wondering if this is indeed a good time, and if it's even legally
> possible to fork it without licensing issues.
>
> I am thinking of a few reasons for the fork: the disappointing
> progress with Java 7 (several features pushed back to Java 8, maybe
> java 9/10..), the general frustration with the JCP process, and the
> worrying dominance of the Java platform by a single organisation.
>
> Do you think there is a valid case for a fork, is it even feasible,
> and could it gain traction within the community?
>
> What would be the licensing obstacles?
> How could such a project be managed effectively?
> Is there anything which could be improved in terms of the JCP, and
> adding new features more quickly?
>
> Here's an insteresting reaction post by someone called Sacha:
>
Cédric Beust ♔
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Cédric
Jan Goyvaerts™
robogeek
fork via IcedTea because it's OpenJDK based - and by current rules
OpenJDK based projects are allowed to get ahold of the TCK under
certain terms.
The IcedTea project has been an OpenJDK almost-fork for its entire
existence. They chose to work closely with the OpenJDK team as a
positive move. However the name and project site has been there all
along, in part (I think) as an ace in the hole that they could start a
hostile fork project should Sun turn evil. Sun wasn't willing to turn
evil but one could argue that Oracle has.
The Open Office situation has strong parallels here. I no longer
remember all the names - but in 2008 at FOSDEM, I met a thought leader
in the outside-of-Sun OOo community who expressed to me some crispy
betrayal feelings towards Sun. They'd set up a non-Sun project whose
purpose was simplifying building OOo for Linux distros and they had
several additions which Sun wasn't willing to accept. They purposely
kept their own project identity and branding just in case Sun were to
(as they expected would eventually happen) turn evil.
Would it be a good idea to launch a hostile fork of Java ...?
Well - It's questionable what a "fork of Java" would be since "Java"
is not an open source project. OpenJDK and Harmony are open source
projects, Java is not. Java is the trademark/name for a software
platform specification. Both OpenJDK and Harmony attempt to implement
that platform specification.
Maybe I should be using my java.net blog for these postings rather
than burying them in the Java Posse group...
On Oct 5, 12:45 pm, Augusto Sellhorn <augusto.sellh...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Fabrizio Giudici
> Agreed.
>
> It's very easy for anonymous dzone developers to vote the post up and
> say "yeah, great idea" but maybe they should pause and ponder this:
>
> "Imagine you're the CTO of your company. Six months from now, Lava
> releases v1.0 of their new language. Do you convert your entire
> company to use it or stick with Java?".
>
Cédric makes me think of an additional argument to back my point:
notwithstanding my known criticism of some parts of Android that could
have been done better :-), Android it another proof that a successful
technology emerges out of skilled engineering _and_ cohese politics.
That is, Android is successful because Google de facto _imposed_ it to
phone manufacturers (not with force, I mean, but in the end Google is
the leading player for the specs, both sw and hw). And it's evolving
fast. The big failure of the JME model, IMO, is due to the fact that Sun
couldn't impose anything to phone manufacturers, hence a collective
process about how to evolve the technology arose and you know where it
went (of course, these are not only the two different points from the
JME and Android governance, but the ones that I feel relevant now). I
could cite Apple too, but it's a one-of-its-kind solo player and can be
argued as an exception. Oracle must solve some essential points in the
way it wants to relation with other corporates and the community, but
I'd feel better with a single steward.
amiro
dzone crowd ;) )
Yes, I think you're all right, it could only lead to politicking, and
it's a bit early in the Oracle tenure to call 'mutiny'.
@Augusto, I think I'm asking a slightly different question. I see
Apache Harmony as an alternative implementation of the existing JVM
spec. It's a really important project, but I'm talking about a
potential fork which could diverge from the JVM specs. It's a bit of a
hypothetical question. If you wanted to do it, could you, and could it
be managed in a more open, distributed way, like Linux, etc?
I'm interested to understand the legal possibilities of such a fork,
or even to understand what alternatives Oracle could themselves devise
to 'freshen up' the JCP.
@Frederico: that Markus Eisele article is a really good read, thanks.
Well, I've just seen the description of today's JP podcast, I think
I'll enjoy it .. cheers
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Fabrizio Giudici
> I'm interested to understand the legal possibilities of such a fork,
> or even to understand what alternatives Oracle could themselves devise
> to 'freshen up' the JCP.
>
ends. We can guess, anyway, that a fork derived from OpenJDK is
relatively safe (as IcedTea pointed by robogeek); from Harmony currently
it wouldn't for sure. If Oracle loses, everything would be safe.
I think we're missing another point, that the past year stormed a bit,
but we've got short term memory: the MySQL thing. It turned out that,
being GPL, it can be forked, but only the owner, Oracle, would be
allowed to offer an alternate license. It was the Stallman's argument
and AFAIU the main reason for which the EU stalled the acquisition
process. Given that much of the business with corporates is alternate
licensing (for indemnification and so on), I infer that nobody could
fork Java and be able to offer it under another license (obvious fact,
after all), thus offering indemnification support. For most industrial
purposes, this would be a showstopper (but of course guys only think of
the "community"). Another reason for which I'm skeptical about the fork.
--
Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager
Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere."
java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici - www.tidalwave.it/people
Nick Brown
I agree with this logic. First, what size of a company are you
talking about a CTO for? IBM or Google? Or a small startup? The
former are going to be more conservative and slower to change simply
because they have a large investment in today's Java. But a smaller,
newer company isn't going to have that same investment, and will
likely need a place to gain an advantage over their bigger
competition, and a better platform could be a way to provide that
advantage. They are mainly going to be the ones to adopt a fork (or
more likely, a new JVM-based language like Scala or Clojure), so it
makes no sense to deride an idea simply because large companies won't
be willing to switch to it.
Second, Java was at one point the new kid on the block. And despite
its immaturity, companies were willing to adopt it. Same with C/C++
before it.
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Fabrizio Giudici
> Well now wait a minute. I'm not in favor of a fork, but I'm not sure
> I agree with this logic. First, what size of a company are you
> talking about a CTO for? IBM or Google? Or a small startup? The
> former are going to be more conservative and slower to change simply
> because they have a large investment in today's Java. But a smaller,
> newer company isn't going to have that same investment, and will
> likely need a place to gain an advantage over their bigger
> competition, and a better platform could be a way to provide that
> advantage. They are mainly going to be the ones to adopt a fork (or
> more likely, a new JVM-based language like Scala or Clojure), so it
> makes no sense to deride an idea simply because large companies won't
> be willing to switch to it.
>
> Second, Java was at one point the new kid on the block. And despite
> its immaturity, companies were willing to adopt it. Same with C/C++
> before it.
*ava, while large players would stay on Java. That's precisely one of
the worst things that could happen, it would be a great fraction. One of
the best qualities of Java is that it scales and fits the needs from the
small ones to the large ones. I think it's one of the main reasons of
its success. Break the equilibrium, and you'd have both Java and *ava to
become quickly losers. In particular *ava: I think that the panorama of
small players would get extremely fragmented.
--
Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager
Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere."
java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici - www.tidalwave.it/people
Cédric Beust ♔
Well now wait a minute. I'm not in favor of a fork, but I'm not sure
I agree with this logic. First, what size of a company are you
talking about a CTO for? IBM or Google? Or a small startup? The
former are going to be more conservative and slower to change simply
because they have a large investment in today's Java. But a smaller,
newer company isn't going to have that same investment, and will
likely need a place to gain an advantage over their bigger
competition, and a better platform could be a way to provide that
advantage. They are mainly going to be the ones to adopt a fork (or
more likely, a new JVM-based language like Scala or Clojure), so it
makes no sense to deride an idea simply because large companies won't
be willing to switch to it.
Cédric
Ricky Clarkson
> would you bet the entire future of your company on a language that's six
> months old and backed up by a vague open source movement? What guarantee do
> you have that the fork will be maintained, that bugs will get fixed, that
> new features will be implemented, that performance will keep improving,
> etc...?
Yes, I would, if one of those two employees was a devoted JVM
engineer. More seriously, yes, but for small projects only.
Miroslav Pokorny
Did it ever occur that standard is the most important valuable aspect of any entity into todays world. Try build train boogeys or carriages that are incompatible with standard gauge 4 feet 8 1/2 inches and i can almost guarantee nobody will care. The platform is the jewel, warts and all. You might lose out because Java is took a while to get fancy for loop, but the fact that is the global defacto means i also get to select from a zillion open source libraries or commerical products to solve my next problem. I might waste have wasted a bit of time with the long form of the for each loop but in the end i dont care because if i had to use some obscure platform and language i would probably be stuck because I dont have Java's plethora of choice.
If you really believe in forking - try and little social experiment, drive your car on the left hand side like those in the British Commonwealth. Everyone knows its the proper, natural side, after all most people walk on the left and give way to the right.
Ricky Clarkson
Companies can benefit from being the same as everyone else, but they
can also benefit from being different. If it turns out to be hard to
get a feature into Java, maintaining a fork (and keeping it up to date
with the original) might be worth the effort.
In any case, programming is not only about companies.
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Miroslav Pokorny
Ricky Clarkson
startup, optimisations for low-memory environments, or even at the
language level something like unsigned integer types. If the benefit
outweighs the cost, there's no reason not to do it.
On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Miroslav Pokorny
<miroslav...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> If u really want a new feature use the extensibility options available today - write your own library or framework. Almost nobody will benefit by creating their own fork. The amount of effort taken to add the language feature is cancelled out by the current and future engineering efforts to implement thAt feature. Given something as simple as the for each loop of yester year as a simple barometer how could anyone possible justify time to do that for themselves or a customer. No boss or customer is going to want that bill just so you can have a new fancy for each loop like other languages. If you want to do it for fun by all means but as a business strategy it's completely pointless and mad. Given the time it's taken to get Jdk 7 out , I would be seriously challenged to find any business who would allocate funds and resources for a similarly sized enhancement of java.
>
Nick Brown
good steward of the language?
On Oct 7, 5:35 pm, Cédric Beust ♔ <ced...@beust.com> wrote:
Cédric Beust ♔
Isn't the whole point of a fork that people don't trust Oracle to be a
good steward of the language?
Cédric
Nick Brown
you have that the fork will be maintained, that bugs will get fixed,
that
new features will be implemented, that performance will keep
improving,
etc...? "
does need a steward.
On Oct 8, 12:18 pm, Cédric Beust ♔ <ced...@beust.com> wrote:
Miroslav Pokorny
Perhaps a more significant feature would be worth it, like faster
startup, optimisations for low-memory environments, or even at the
language level something like unsigned integer types. If the benefit
outweighs the cost, there's no reason not to do it.
Jan Goyvaerts™
--
Reinier Zwitserloot
breach of patents - the exact same list that google has been sued for.
Using an official, TCK-seal-of-approval carrying java implementation
means that cannot happen.
So, other than accelerating the rate of change in the language, which
is far, FAR more complicated than most people here seem to think it
is, there are only downsides to doing so.
For such a project to offer a compelling reason to switch, it needs to
offer a lot more. This will probably involve backwards incompatible
changes. For example, something as seemingly simple as adding function
types and closures to java isn't. Most discussion on lambda-dev is
still trying to piece together a workable proposal that lets java
remain backwards compatible, and something as simple as generics
reification (which itself is very very complicated when it needs to
remain backwards compatible) means that function types aren't going to
work all that well (as function types are essentially like generics
parameters and thus hard to reify).
Thus, the folks upvoting this stuff are most likely severely
underestimating the effort required in outpacing Oracle in evolving
java while retaining the java rules (Backwards compatibility in
various interpretations). The alternative of not being backwards
compatible is effectively the same as saying: We'll invent a new
language.
That's possibly a good idea, but many people are already doing that,
and so far those projects haven't gotten much traction. There's the
first such project (Groovy), and a project that made a major course
change (Scala), which are new languages that more or less intend to be
a better java that have some traction. The rest, not so much.
On Oct 4, 9:01 pm, amiro <amirla...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's a link to an article by someone called Greg Luck.
>
> http://www.dzone.com/links/is_it_time_to_fork_java.html
>
> Greg proposes a Java fork which would maintain compatibility with
> existing Java6 code.
>
> I am wondering if this is indeed a good time, and if it's even legally
> possible to fork it without licensing issues.
>
> I am thinking of a few reasons for the fork: the disappointing
> progress with Java 7 (several features pushed back to Java 8, maybe
> java 9/10..), the general frustration with the JCP process, and the
> worrying dominance of the Java platform by a single organisation.
>
> Do you think there is a valid case for a fork, is it even feasible,
> and could it gain traction within the community?
>
> What would be the licensing obstacles?
> How could such a project be managed effectively?
> Is there anything which could be improved in terms of the JCP, and
> adding new features more quickly?
>
> Here's an insteresting reaction post by someone called Sacha:
>