Stratocaster

Wednesday April 30, 2008

Community Matchmaking

Wednesday March 19, 2008

The Challenge of The Challenge

At FOSDEM this year, Mark Wielaard talked about how the Free Java community is first and foremost about real people doing real software - and among those real people, the folks who were in the Free Java devroom at the conference. I agreed with him when I took a few minutes to pump up the OpenJDK Community Innovators' Challenge to the assembled developers, only I added that the Challenge is about real people doing real software - for real money. $175,000 for OpenJDK and a cool $1 Million total for six communities participating in Sun's Open Source Community Awards initiative to be precise.

I was a little nervous at FOSDEM, with only a couple weeks until the proposal phase of the Challenge closed, and only a small handful of proposals received. I should have known better! At the last minute - well, really the last few days - an avalanche of proposals came pouring in from community members keen on contributing to the OpenJDK project and on being recognized for their contributions. An amazing 18 proposals were received, many of which were very meaty, useful and sophisticated ideas on new APIs and language features, on media, graphics, and sound components, on porting, on new languages for the JRE, and on the guts of the VM itself. It has been so gratifying to see the excitement and enthusiasm for Java technology and for the OpenJDK project. Sure we have our problems - they're well documented, and not unexpected for a project of this magnitude with so much technical and cultural history behind it. But overall, the community is coming together, working out what is important, and starting to gather momentum around some key efforts.

As a judge for the Challenge, I watched as some of Sun's best engineers evaluated these proposals and wrestled with understanding and prioritizing them. I chimed in with market perspective and ideas about how various projects might add to the relevance of OpenJDK in new markets and for new uses. The Challenge has been a challenge to judge but in the end, we picked seven finalists to continue on to the Project phase, where they will implement their proposals in the open, with the community invited to watch and participate. On August 4th the Project phase will end and the final judging round commence. Shortly after that, Sun will announce the winners, and cut some checks to some very deserving developers.

Here then are the seven finalists. Good luck, and thank you for your energy and initiative!

Wednesday March 05, 2008

Open Sourcing the Vast Wasteland

Remember when Sun said the company was open sourcing its Java implementations to take the Java platform into places it couldn't otherwise go? Places where open source and free software are a prerequisite for consideration?

How does a whole nation's digital TV infrastructure, serving nearly 100 million TVs grab you? And thats just the start! Java technology will be at the heart of Brazil's new digital TV standard. And it wouldn't have happened if Java was not Free software.

Countries in the developing world demand open source solutions to bring advanced technology within reach of their citizens, while maintaining control of their economic destiny. As Free software, Java is positioned to be a foundation for initiatives such as Brazil's SBTVD. Where will Java go next? Anywhere in the world!

 

Monday November 12, 2007

November 13 is Java Liberation Day

Remember a year ago, when we turned the world upside down with one of the largest contributions to the Participation Age in history?

I thought you did!

Its been quite an exciting year... and believe me, from inside of Sun, its been exciting and intense. What makes the open source Java special? Well, for starters, there are more JVMs installed on servers, PCs, phones, and other devices than all instances of Windows, Solaris, and Linux combined. There's no way to prove this, but I suspect that Java technology is the most widely used software on earth. Heck.... Java is even used by NASA to help control planetary probes... so make that off-earth too! The sheer magnitude of use, and importance of the Java platform in enablng billions of people to interact with information technology around the world make open sourcing this stuff a one-of-a-kind experiment.

We hear a lot of this from the FOSS developer communities:

"Why is it taking so long?!"

"Why not open your processes up to outside committers?"

"What's wrong with using the FOSS replacements for your encumbered bits? Get it over with!"

Its not so easy, folks! What happens if we break it? Inadvertently make it unstable, or introduce security problems? Make it incompatible with the specification or with other implementations? What do we tell those billions of people, and the ecosystem of vendors and developers that drive over $100B of economic value a year based on this platform, if we mess it up? "Its open source now! You can fix it yourself!" Right.

Nobody's ever tried to do this before. Nobody's tried to open source many millions of lines of industrial-strength code used not just by one company, but by the entire planet, while doing right by all those users depending on this technology. We're excited by the potential for innovation and the opportunities for the Java platform to become even more valuable as it can go places it couldn't go as closed-source technology. But Sun also is committed to protecting customers' and the ecosystem's investment in this stuff. So if it seems like we're control freaks sometimes, there's some good reasons for that.

We're not done yet.... we know that. But on November 13, I hope that Sun's engineering team, the FOSS developer world, and the entire Java ecosystem can look back at what happened last year at this time with pride and excitement for the future. Who knows what innovations we'll see in the next few years, once Java technology is everywhere around the world that red-shift developers are working to create the future of IT? Sun sure doesn't! Thats what makes this so much fun!

Some highlights from the past year:

November 13 2006:

• We open sourced several components of Java SE (javac, HotSpot), and the ENTIRE Java ME code base, both CLDC and CDC, under the surprising and couragous choice of GPLv2. Richard Stallman (Flash | Ogg) said: "It shows leadership. It’s an example I hope others will follow.” The "Java Trap" finished!

December 20, 2006:

• Just five weeks after first code availability, the MIDPath Project releases a MIDP 2 implementation for desktops, based on the phoneME project. Now you can play those fun mobile Java-based games on your PC too! A compelling demonstration of how opening up code leads to new and unanticipated innovations.

Spring 2007:

• After attending several worldwide open source and developer conferences including TechDays in Hyderabad, India, FOSDEM in Belgium, and FISL in Brazil, we realize that the developer world is giving us a standing ovation for our choice, and for the transparency we are striving to achieve in how we move through the process.

• Meanwhile the OpenJDK team is feverishly doing legal due-diligence, switching license headers, repackaging and preparing for a big JavaOne.

• The Mobile and Embedded Community starts porting phoneME Advanced to Windows CE. And BugLabs starts work on an innovative modular hardware platform based on phoneME Advanced.

May 7, 2007:

• Vodaphone Betavine expresses interest in collaborating with the Mobile and Embedded Community at CommunityOne. Now larger players in the Java ME ecosystem start to recognize the value of FOSS innovation!

May 8, 2007:

• 9:29am PT - a fully buildable implementation of the JDK is released on the openjdk.java.net site. Rich Green announces this at JavaOne during the opening keynote, along with the formation of the OpenJDK Interim Governance Board, and a promise to provide TCK access to OpenJDK-based free software implementations of Java SE.

• 2:46pm PT - a little over 5 hours later, a Gentoo Linux ebuild of the OpenJDK code base is published. So in just 5 hours, the Gentoo folks downloaded, unpacked, repackaged, rebuilt, and published an OpenJDK-based Java SE implementation for use by the Gentoo Linux community! We said we did it to gain Linux adoption.... guess its working!

• May 9, 3:06am PT - not quite 18 hours later, a source RPM is published by the Fedora project. By Fedora engineers who were sitting in the audience at JavaOne and who were so enthusiastic they worked all day and night to deliver it from the conference!

May 9, 2007:

• phoneME Feature Milestone Release 2 is released in the Mobile and Embedded Community.

May 16, 2007:

• phoneME Advanced Milestone Release 2 completes the update to the Java ME FOSS code bases. Now both Feature and Advanced implementations are under live development in the project's Subversion repository on java.net. The sausage factory is open for tours!

June 7, 2007:

• The IcedTea project forms, to deliver a patchset for the OpenJDK code base that allows it to be built from 100% free source code, using free software build tools. "We intend this build repository, based on OpenJDK, to provide a basis on which to experiment. It’s not a fork from OpenJDK, and doesn’t contain the OpenJDK source code.” - Andrew Haley, Red Hat. IcedTea is both a testament to the eagerness of FOSS developers to dive into the code and get a completely unencumbered implementation out there, and a sober reminder to Sun that we're entering into a new world where things move FAST, and if we don't keep up, we'll be left behind.

August 9, 2007:

• Sun announces the OpenJDK Community TCK License Agreement - quite a mouthful. But the idea is simple: if you have an implementation based on OpenJDK and distributed under GPL, and you want to make sure it is compatible, you can gain access to both the TCK for certifying compatibility, and once certified, you can use the "Java Compatible" brand. All under terms that make sense to the FOSS community, and respect both the requirements of the GPL and the spirit of Free software.

Fall 2007:

• The Java SE engineering team dives into the hard work of building out infrastructure and clearing encumbrances. Progress is made and code checked in to resolve the Font Rasterizer, Graphics Rasterizer, and Crypto encumbrances. The team works to publish Mercurial-based source code management repositories - a key enabler of community participation.

• IcedTea makes fast progress too - the 1.4 release on October 12 is based on OpenJDK b21, and has replacement code or stubs for all the encumbered bits, and is able to run many Java applications with the key functionality problems mostly in javascript, sound, and SNMP support, and in details of graphics support.

• The Mobile and Embedded Community begins porting phoneME advanced to the Nokia N770/N800 Internet tablet device. And Italian consortium Cineca is using phoneME in an open source set-top box for interactive digital TV.

November 5, 2007:

• Red Hat announces that they have signed the Sun Contributor Agreement (SCA) and the OpenJCK Community TCK License Agreement (OCTLA - pdf). A significant player in the Linux world agrees to join and contribute, and to work towards shipping a 100% Free and compatible implemenetation as part of their distributions. This also paves the way for most of the IcedTea developers, who work within the Fedora project at Red Hat, to align IcedTea even more closely with OpenJDK.

November 13, 2007:

• One year later, the OpenJDK project has been downloaded nearly 12,700 times by developers in the six months since the JavaOne announcement of a fully buildable JDK. And that tracks only full bundle downloads of the 6.5+ million line code base, and not checkouts through the read-only Subversion repository. The OpenJDK Interim Governance Board is actively working toward creating a Constitution.The mailing lists are active, with a lot of passionate developers both inside and outside of Sun discussing the code, the new Mercurial SCM, and how best to work together.There's been good progress clearing the encumbrances but there's plenty left to be done!The Mobile and Embedded Community has over 80 projects active, over 500 passionate members, and has seen over 20,000 downloads of all projects in the community. The Java Mobile and Embedded Developer Days Conference, scheduled for January 23-24 2008 featuring James Gosling as keynote speaker is open for registration, and will be the event in 2008 for mobile Java developers to dig in and experience one-of-a-kind technical content and connect with peers and industry experts.

Tuesday November 06, 2007

Red Hat's Fine Example

Its a big day for open source Java! Red Hat has signed the Sun Contributor Agreement (SCA) and the OpenJDK Community TCK License Agreement (OCTLA - .pdf), opening the way for their engineers to join the community and contribute. Sounds like a bunch of legal junk, right? Well yes but, it means that Red Hat will ship a compatible implementation of Java SE based on OpenJDK in their distros, using the TCK to test and certify their implementation and bringing "Write Once, Run Anywhere" to their customers and community. When Sun open sourced Java, the company said it wanted to get compatible AND free software implementations into Linux. Well, its working!

This is a major milestone. Red Hat is, of course, a key player in the Linux space. Its a big endorsement for them to join the OpenJDK community under Sun's participation model. Their engineers will be contributing under the SCA, sharing copyright with Sun. When that means folks as knowledgeable and dedicated as Tom and Tom and Andrew and Lillian and Anthony and others we've gotten to know at Red Hat in the past year now have the opportunity to contribute, thats exciting!

Building a community isn't easy, and building a 6.5+ million line code base whose hallmark is compatibility in an open source community is something new to the world. Java technology is on more systems and devices than every other platform - Windows, Linux, Solaris - everything - combined. Java SE runs on most desktop computers in the world, and underlies the stack of server-side middleware that has been so successful in delivering the promise of the Internet to the world. So how does Sun do right by the billions of people benefitting from Java technology while leading the way to opening Java to the FOSS world?

Sun has thought long and hard about what it will take to meet its obligations to customers, licensees, and yes of course, shareholders, while making the communities Sun sponsors as welcoming as possible to a wide range of developers. Open sourcing the code is a start. The participation model is where the action is moving to now.

Matt Asay had this to say:

This is what happens when you get the two biggest open-source companies on the planet. It's what a partnership should look like. It's also a great example of how competitors can compete while still cooperating on baseline technology.

Its great to see Red Hat agreeing that Sun has a model that works for them.

Hopefully other distros will follow suit.

Thursday November 01, 2007

Don't Miss Java Mobile and Embedded Developer Days!

If you're a Java ME platform or application developer and want to get a jolt of deep technical know-how then you'll want to attend the Java Mobile and Embedded Developer Days conference, January 23-24 2008 at Sun's Santa Clara Campus.

This is your chance to rub shoulders with other advanced developers and learn what your peers are up to, and meet the experts from Sun  and other Java ME vendors who can get you jump started on leveraging and combining the resources available in the Java ME platform. Oh, and have some fun!

 Don't miss it - register soon!

 

Monday September 17, 2007

Joining the Church of Macintosh

Mark Wielaard just IM'ed me and said "What??? No Stratocaster update yet?" He and several others have been on my case to resurrect this blog and start commenting on... stuff. So here I am... peer pressure works! Eventually. I promised Mark I would post, and I gotta start sometime. And sometime is right now. So here I am again!

My wife and I bought our first Apple Macintosh this past weekend. The huge (almost too big) 24-inch new iMac. In for a penny, in for a pound. Why am I switching from one proprietary (Windows) OS to another even more proprietary (Mac OS X) OS after having been immersed in the open source world now for over 3 years? When guys like Tom Marble have been begging me to switch to Ubuntu Linux? Well... Windows Vista finally pushed me over the edge. After what I've read about it, and the years of aggravation I've had running XP, I just am having no part of it. So where to now?

I have Ubuntu on my Toshiba laptop. It installed fine, found all the hardware. Even the WiFi worked out of the box. But after messing with it for awhile I realized it was going to take me several hours of goofing with dialog boxes and watching installation scripts run to get it into productive shape. Its not like I'm a dummy when it comes to computers - I'm a power user, and I've got a lot of friends who know everything there is to know about them and can give me help and advice at the drop of a hat. But the thought of making Ubuntu into a productive tool that fits my work style was... well, just not appetizing.

Some other colleagues and friends have long been members of the Church. They've been inviting me to join... and find meaning in my computing life. Ray Gans in particular has been telling me how great the Mac is. And if Simon Phipps is a confirmed Mac-o-phile, then I guess I can use one too.

I am now wondering what took me so long. It is so well-designed, the software so smooth and effortless to use, it is almost like it reads my mind what I want to do. Usually, anything I want to do is one or two obvious clicks or drags without all that "hmmm how do I do that?" annoyance. The applications are just as easy to use as the OS itself. I get it. User experience really IS important.

So why is the user experience on the Mac so great, and on Ubuntu it is, well, not so great (though in fairness, not unusably bad either). Its not because open source software is inherently not easy to use. While Firefox doesn't have the buttery smooth intuitiveness of a Mac application, it is certainly easy to use. But the hallmark of Firefox is its extensibility and the community that has developed around it, not its ease of use. I know that Canonical and the Ubuntu community are working hard to make Ubuntu desktop easy to use as well and has made great progress. But any Linux distro is going to be made up of mostly applications and components that come from many sources, many developers, with different ideas of what is easy and what is not. Some are easy for power users but not for newbies. A few are only easy for their authors. Some are genuinely easy, but still different from other software written by other developers. What makes the Mac so easy is very careful, tested design, and absolute consistency. You can intuit how to do almost anything, and no matter where you are or what you're using, it works the same way.

It seems to me that great user experience is inherently not something that emerges naturally from the hurly-burly world of open source development. Different developers think they know the best way to do something and don't want to be constrained by others' ideas on usability. Or they want to experiment with different approaches. Or whatever - it doesn't matter why all those Linux applications are different. They are. So how to reconcile the need for great user experience - which requires discipline and consistency - with the open source development model? I don't know the answer - but I suspect that a combination of a community-invented (by open development usability nerds) UI specification and guidelines for Linux applications, coupled with intense peer pressure for projects to conform to these guidelines might be a start.

Tuesday June 14, 2005

MVM Exposed How cool is this? Want to get a glimpse of some really advanced software research? Source code for Sun Labs' Barcelona project (aka MVM) to make Java technology more scalable just got posted to the JDK Community research project on java.net. MVM stands for "Multi-tasking Virtual Machine", and this project aims to let multiple Java technology applications run in one VM, sharing resources, reducing start-up time, shrinking the memory footprint, all without any cross-application interference. Damn cool stuff - should work on VMs from cell-phone size to clusters of big servers.

But what is really cool is that if you're a developer, researcher, professor, or just a student of wizardly software engineering, you can get involved and contribute. This technology has gotten both press attention and plenty of interest from Java developers. Now that it is a full-fledged JDK research project, the community can look under the covers and see how it works, and help steer this technology's development by contributing ideas and code and talking with Sun Labs' researchers directly.

The Participation Age isn't just empty words - its projects like Barcelona on the JDK Community.
(2005-06-14 14:30:00.0) Permalink Comments [2]

Friday June 03, 2005

Learning to Share I'm very excited about Sun's new "Share" brand image. Why? Because finally Sun the corporation is talking to the world about what makes me want to come to work everyday. I've always felt that Sun is about community, participation, and sharing. It is so gratifying to see the company's image to the world be about the things that make Sun a fun place to work for me. The open and cooperative spirit I've seen so often with the teams and people I work with should help Sun be in the right spot to turn opportunities into good business as the industry moves into the Participation Age.

Sun has sometimes been accused of not playing nice with others. I've always thought this to be strange, because it conflicts so directly with my everyday experience. But a recent conversation I had with Jonathan Eunice at Illuminata crystallized for me one source of friction. Its not enough for Sun to make it easy to participate in Sun-sponsored projects like OpenSolaris, NetBeans, OpenOffice, Java, etc. Is Sun also willing to participate in others' projects?

Perhaps Sun hasn't done as good a job at highlighting its employees' participation in non-Sun efforts as in talking about how others can contribute to Sun's communities. In his blog, RedMonk's Stephen O'Grady points to Sun's contributions to the accessibility toolkit component of the GNOME desktop project as one example of Sun engineers contributing their sweat equity. Another example: the Mozilla Foundation called out Sun's contribution to Firefox in the credits line of their New York Times advertisement (pdf), in appreciation of work done on the version 1.0 source base by Sun engineers. There are many other unsung examples... but they're unsung, and that is Jonathan Eunice's point.

Doing even more, and singing that song a bit louder might help change the perception that Sun should learn to share.
(2005-06-03 08:00:50.0) Permalink Comments [0]

Tuesday May 31, 2005

Hello, and... Time to jump into the conversation!
(2005-05-31 15:11:05.0) Permalink Comments [0]