Looking for JXTA buzz
There has been an email thread on JXTA discussion mailing list about the status of JXTA and questioning how much Sun is committed to the technology.
Here is what I think about the topic. As a community member, I understand there is a lot to be improved, and I wish there are more developers dedicate their time to the reference implementation projects, but let us be more realistic. After all, you have to set your expectation right when it comes to an open source project.
JXTA is a set of protocols that enables many possible applications by allowing a peer on the network to self-organized together and serve each other. You can imagine different projects demanding different features to be built atop JXTA.
JXTA is not a product sold by Sun, therefore expect Sun to have dedicate resources to support the community for free is not realistic nor fair. As a corporate, it is certainly understandable that developers from Sun works on projects align with Sun's objective. However, Sun does employee a team continuously working on the technology, and we do care and support the community with our limited time.
It is grateful that Sun initiated and open-sourced different reference implementations of JXTA: for Java SE, C and Java ME. As each project moving forward, makes sure they are inter-operable even though each has different level support of the protocols as each project moving forward. For example, the JSE supports most complete features available with JXTA today, such as reliable layer, JxtaSocket interface, PSE membership service, etc, while C/C++/.NET binding still working on relay server and TLS transport but support more advanced discovery query and a new peerview protocol is under development with C. With Java ME, a complete edge capability is supported.
However, JXTA is an open source project and you are welcomed to contribute. As a meritocracy, Sun is no different from others as a contributor to the project. Participate in the project, and benefit each other with contributions.
