One of the biggest challenges when you drive into the Open Source initiative is to get people to participate and dedicate it’s time to innovation.   Here at Chile we have a big challenge we are in the process of introducing many new things, and like many new things in a community not used to risk and participate, it’s not easy.  One of the fist challenges we have it’s to raise a new Java community, but this community pretends to be ambitious, it will me mainly formed by University Students from all of the biggest Universities and Institutes in the Country like the UTFSM, USACH, DUOC, etc.  Maybe what we are willing to achieve it’s big, but we have the advantage to be the first attempt to do this in the country, and certainly will be a great challenge.  So far things are great and one the metrics we can use to say that is the amount of people participating in the open course we have every week at the “Universidad de Santiago”(University of Santiago)  where we have about 45 people actively participating and learning Java apart from their studies at the University.    

So far we have over a month of work in this and it’s gaining momentum, we have several projects on the way, among generation of open materials for students and more courses, aside of the fact of potential project to develop with Netbeans and Solaris.  We have very smart and enthusiastic people in the group and every day we have more people involved from all over the country.

Certainly we have a lot of work to do, but the most important thing to be successful it’s growing, which is participation, collaboration, and innovation.

Ayer se realizo aquí en Chile el evento anual de la empresa de tecnología Oracle, muy conocida por todos principalmente por ser una de las empresas líderes en tecnología de base de datos comercial de la actualidad. Pero los tiempos han cambiado, y Oracle ha cambiado su enfoque de negocios desde el lanzamiento de nuevas tecnologías (como lo fue hace un tiempo atrás con uno de los primeros acercamientos de BPEL y también con el desarrollo en JSF y Toplink) hacia la adquisición de grandes empresas que le han permitido acercarse hacia el gran mundo del software de gestión empresarial como lo son los Worldclass o sistemas de ERP.  Y ciertamente ha sido un gran impulso donde en los últimos tres años Oracle ha adquirido cerca de 30 empresas líderes de diferentes sectores dentro del software empresarial tales como lo es SIEBEL y JDEDWARDS.   Ciertamente Oracle ha volcado gran parte de sus esfuerzos y recursos para ganar mercado donde SAP es aun el líder de este sector, donde dentro de sus lanzamientos esta toda una nueva línea de software como el Oracle E-Business Suite 12.  También se realizo el lanzamiento de la nueva versión de la base de datos Oracle en su versión 11g, pero claramente el enfoque es otro, donde la integración y el software de gestión son la punta de lanza.

Ahora, ciertamente se extraña que actualmente donde las empresas del ámbito de tecnología hablan de la colaboración y la innovación respecto a las nuevas y emergentes plataformas de desarrollo tecnológico, dentro de lo cual el código abierto es un pilar fundamental para esto y que además a entendido gran parte de estas empresas, Oracle no ha comprometido mayormente su enfoque tecnológico de sus midleware hacia esa visión, a pesar de uno que otro aporte y soporte a algunas comunidades(como lo es con Berkely DB).  En ese sentido marca una diferenciación con respecto al enfoque de SUN en el software de infraestructura, donde hoy podemos encontrar gran parte de ella liberada, con algunos casos de éxito como lo es el application server Glassfish.   De hecho hoy en día podemos encontrar importante soluciones de middelware de SUN en OpenSouce, como lo son las soluciones de identidad de OpenSSO (https://opensso.dev.java.net/) o de Portal Server en OpenPortal (https://portal.dev.java.net/) y principalmente el enfoque que le está dando SUN a la integración de aplicaciones con OpenESB (https://open-esb.dev.java.net/) donde Netbeans 6.0 tendrá mucho que decir al respecto.

Claramente la visión de las empresas son diferentes y respecto a las apuestas tecnológicas es difícil predecir el resultado en un mercado tan fluctuante.  En este sentido SUN puede aprovechar y tomar algunas ventajas con este modelo de tipo "bazar" para darle la madurez necesaria a las alternativas de middleware como para que se conviertan en soluciones de negocio importantes dado que claramente van a ser cada vez más necesarias en un mundo de integración tecnológica.

Hace un par de semanas fue liberado el milestone 10 de la nueva versión de Netbeans 6.0, que pretende ser liberada cerca de fin de año; ahora, si bien es cierto también hace muy poco tiempo fue liberada la versión 5.5.1 de Netbeans (inclusive y por primera vez en español), la nueva versión de Netbeans promete convertirse por lejos en una de las mejores y más importante de los release jamás realizados.  Ahora déjenme explicar el por qué de esto según mi opinión.

Primero, tal como ha sido anunciado a la comunidad el futuro de la plataforma Java está en que la maquina virtual se transformara en host de un conjunto de lenguajes de “propósito especifico” por así decirlo, específicamente en este caso de jRuby con su framework de desarrollo web “Ruby on Rails” y por otro lado un lenguaje script que fue lanzado unos meses atrás durante el JavaOne orientado a desarrollo de aplicaciones multimedia muy parecido a lo que es Flash de Macromedia, es decir: Java FX. Estos dos lenguajes están fuertemente integrados en esta próxima versión y lo más probable es que los desarrollos para la plataforma de Netbeans que surjan para optimizar tal integración ayudaran aun mas a que los desarrolladores Java puedan sacar provecho de las otras plataformas disponibles.

Segundo, uno de los puntos débiles para algunos con respecto a la competencia estaba relacionado con las capacidades del editor mismo, que carecía de las flexibilidades que eran apreciables en sistemas como JBuilder o el mismo Eclipse.  En Netbeans 6.0 se reconstruyo completamente el editor y el framework de la plataforma, ahora con una estructura mucho más limpia, rápida e inteligente, haciéndolo un editor muy interesante para aquellos que quieren tener control del código de forma elegante.

Otro punto que es muy interesante es la fuerte integración con la plataforma JEE5, que ya era muy buena en Netbeans 5.5, ahora también se ha reconstruido totalmente, gracias también a una nuva librería para desarrollo de aplicaciones visuales de tipo grafo llamada “Visual Library” que forma parte del modulo de desarrollo de Netbeans. Esto hace que por un lado tengamos una nueva interfaz de desarrollo para soluciones de Web Services y además también una nueva implementación para el desarrollo de JSF de manera visual.   Además de esto ya se están integrando y formalizando algunos proyectos que transformaran a Netbeans como la herramienta pilar para soportar la implementación, desarrollo y deployment para toda la infraestructura de Servicios e Integración entre los cuales esta parte importante de la tecnología de OpenESB.

Es cierto que aún falta por ver los detalles que se verán liberados en la versión final que tiene fecha para noviembre de este año, pero ciertamente la comunidad Java creo que apreciara un lanzamiento como este.

The past Monday in preparation for the big event of the week(the JavaOne),the community of developers and collaborators joined to talk about some of the new state of the art technologies driving the IT and Developer word, focused in three mayor systems: the OpenSolaris operative system, Netbeans Java IDE tool and Glassfish open application server. 

In the first part of the meeting we had a very interesting community debate where Tim O’Reilly(founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media) along with Richard Green (Executive Vice President, Software, Sun Microsystems, Inc.) and other people from SUN talk about the WEB 2.0 and the collaboration among the community driving the innovation in the entire technology world.

Now, what we can say about the WEB 2.0 in this moment, when it’s been almost three years since Tim O’Reilly used it to describe the new era in the business bases on the open communities and collaboration, driving to the “commoditization” of software among other things; I think there’s a lot to said, and that was clear when we saw Rich Green, talking about open sourcing the entire software system of SUN, and talking about integrating more technologies to the JVM and SUN aiming to reach more developers to adopt that point of view.   The thing is, if today enterprises like SUN don’t make that change, they will probably pay the price for it, because the needs of the people have changed, and it’s important if we can reach to that people, to give them what they want, and what they need today is instant information, services, etc.. And Sun is making that change, which it’s not easy, especially for a company who started with computer sales as its main business, like IBM; what makes more difficult to transform it into a “google” like company.

At least the question is in the air, as Tim O’Reilly said “what if google where the telephone company?”.  And the time for Sun to respond that question has come, because the WEB 2.0 idea in Sun has come serious; who knows maybe in a couple of year Sun will be using “The Network is the People”. 

 

Me and James Gosling(Father of Java)

Tim O'Reilly Presentation

Me and my mentor Gregg Sporar

I have a PC laptop, which has been my personal and (in a way) best partner for work and everything that involves the needs of information in this days; But now, due my work, it seems that the time to change it has come, maybe to something that gives me best performance for the kind of work that I do, which in my case is Java and Database development. For this, one of the first things I tend to think for my new laptop is to get better battery life, good looking, more ram, better processor, which get you to the eternal conflict of price/performance in Intel vs AMD, or sometimes to have or not a dedicated graphic card ( for some occasional game :) ).  When you study these facts today, and also reviewing some history, you finally have to decide for a PC or a MAC.  Historically MAC OS has been the best non-windows platform for the user, also the most good looking laptops, and even into the Java world, has been a favorite for long time Java Developers, but, today we have more than Windows or Mac, things are changed, and there’s an important point where I get stuck; Which of the OS platforms today is the most adequate for Java development?

I know it’s hard and even irresponsible to say or establish that one platform will be better or worse to develop as “the” Java environment; however, we can take a snapshot in this moment. In these days we have (at least in my opinion) 4 mayor platforms to develop: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Open Solaris (not precisely in that order). These OS’s despite the fact of having different market share in different levels, and thaw market share figures are subject to many factors that can affect the resulting pattern, these represent surely over the 99% of the Java development platforms today.   Each one of these has its strong points and weak points (some of them more weak than strong) from this point of view as a Java development platform.  So let’s take a look at every one of them:

Windows in one side, is the most standard OS in homes around the world, so probably almost any computer you buy, will be delivered (like it or not) with some version of this OS. Now, as Java developing platform, it has an easy installation method for almost every developing tool available, and also any distribution of the JDK, JEE and the wireless toolkit for J2ME, thanks to the support from SUN. The dark side of it is that it has so many security issues, viruses, and problems of stability which sometimes makes java developer going crazy just to keep the system up.  The other problem is the scalability of the system, in most of cases, if not all, big java developments will not be hosted in windows servers, but in UNIX platforms or equivalent.  Just these two big factors make windows a not very good choice for the Java developer.

On the other side of the equation we have MAC OS, possibly the most reliable OS for the end user today, specially the MAC OS X Tiger 10.4.6, which due the Mac-Intel agreement uses over a year know Intel chips.  Mac OS X has some great features for the Java developer, first in has a UNIX kernel, which allows developing in an environment similar to production, where the java program will be used.  The other thing is that it has a complete integration with Java, allowing developing application directly for MAC OS, and perhaps the most important part, is the stability of the system, and the lack of viruses.   These facts made Mac OS one of the preferred platforms for developers who can afford a Mac.  But now the things have changed a bit; one problem that Apple always has it’s to keep updated the release of the JDK to the Apple platform, since SUN doesn’t have access to the Mac OS code to coordinate it, which means developers have to wait over a year until Mac releases the new version.   Right now, Apple is working to release the new version of Mac OS X 10.5 called Leopard (possibly in March), that among other new things incorporate a new graphical UI and the new version of Java 6.  So, in this moment to buy a Mac is not a very good choice to the Java Developer, considering that the Open Sourcing of Java will lead to more new versions of Java with possibly bigger changes, which maybe means more problems if Apple continues with the no-collaborative work with SUN or the rest of the JCP companies.    

On the new part of the equation, enters two participants, who comes from different worlds, one is Linux and the other Open Solaris.  These two, are both in a way children from the same father, UNIX. But as the fairy tale, one was the prince and the other the pauper.  The prince was Open Solaris, created by SUN, a true blue blooded derived directly from the original UNIX, with lots of fantastic features, and big-server dominance.  The other called pauper is Linux; this new baby as grown from a UNIX derived kernel, along with a new era in computing; the era of sharing.  Now these days, both share the same idea of open sourcing and they both point to dominate both the hi-end and low-end computer industry.  Apart from its internal differences (which certainly analyze in a future post ) Solaris has some advantages over Linux in terms of Java, it has a better integration with the environment(due it’s SUN support), and its binary compatibility it’s much better than Linux, not to mention that Solaris its more commonly used in the production world. The problem with Solaris compared with Linux is that it’s quite new in the Open Sourcing world, so in there’s a small problem of hardware compatibility and tools.   Even thaw, both of them lack of easy maintenance and user-friendly tools compared with Mac OS or Windows, not to mention support in the case of Linux, which not makes much easy to the Java Developer.

So, after all this, what can I conclude? Well, certainly I can’t say that there’s one big platform for Java Development, especially due the surge of larger communities every day in the Open Source world and the changes that Apple has been doing lately; But, I can say that at least in this moment all the companies are making big changes to help the Java developers community to have better tools and more reliable OS platforms to develop.  Today the world its open, and sharing it’s vital for a healthy software development, so, in that case, maybe in the future, we see more developer specific OS releases, and as soon as the big enterprises understand this (specially the more closed to that, you know who I mean), much healthy the software ecosystem will be for Java.  So, what I will buy for my next computer? I think that for now I’ll have to save much money as I can to afford the biggest amount of memory and hard drive for these systems….

Linux Java Community : http://community.java.net/linux/ 

Mac Java Community : http://community.java.net/mac/ 

The other day, I was just reviewing my responsibilities as Sun Campus Ambassador from Chile in the handbook, and received a box were, among other things, comes a jar with the message engraved “OpenSolaris.org Innovation Happens Everywhere”.  This jar represents the new idea leaded by SUN to promote and develop communities within Universities across the world, as a commitment to empowering academic developers through sharing, collaboration and open innovation, all of these fundamentals pieces of what is called “the Participation Age”.  Some of the resources included are the Campus Ambassador Program (me as Chilean ambassador), which supports over 180 students evangelists in more than 30 countries, who are leading these open source projects into the Universities.

So far, in Chile we’re leading and promoting the universities to become part of the SAI (Sun Academic Initiative) that brings benefits such as get students prepared for industry leading certification from SUN, obtaining marketable job skills; free software and web-learning for all students and academic researchers are included as well.  In the big picture this program comes to interoperate with the responsibilities of the Campus Ambassadors across the world, bringing all the support from SUN to it.

In these first two months a lot of Universities has shown interest into participate and become part of this big game and deliver higher quality education to this “eager young minds” of today.  There’s still a big road ahead, but the participation age seems to be stronger than ever, and in Chile could be as well.

SAI Main Site: http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/edu/programs/sai/