Important facts you may have missed

The forums were particularly interesting yesterday, and I ended up putting three forum items on the front page instead of the usual two. There were two others I thought about posting, but instead, I'd like to address their teachable moments in the daily blog.

The first, by nishu_saini, is in the Java Advanced Imaging (JAI) forum, and asks Where are the binaries of this project:

I have to use the Java Advanced Imaging Image-IO API but I could not find the binaries of any version of this project. I find it very tedius task to checkout from cvs and build the project myself. I am sitting behind a firewall and not able to ping java.net and therefore unable to checkout from cvs.

Granted, if you look at the JAI project, and click on its Documents and Files link, there are no downloads there. However, look at the front page and you'll see a Downloads link, which takes you to the explainer:

The latest early access build of Java Advanced Imaging, JAI 1.1.3-beta, is one of the binary builds available on java.net.

If you take a look at that "binary builds" link, you'll see that what this project is doing is using its web space rather than the "downloads and files" section to post its binaries. OK, maybe that's not the standard approach, but it seems to work for the JAI project. Plus, the project web space is an underappreciated resource -- you could host all kinds of content here, such as Javadocs, documentation, community documents (like maps to get-togethers), etc.

nishu_saini's complaints continue in a followup message, Where are the binaries of this project:: The projects in Java.net suck, which reads:

I hope to find the latest binaries of all releases of the project in the documents and files section but to my disappointment..... most of the projects on java.net do not provide binaries for their projects nor a good description of how to check out from cvs behind the firewall.

Having already covered the location of JAI's binaries, there may be an issue here that I hadn't thought of: our CVS-based projects use the typical pserver option for file transfer, and that typically runs over port 2401. It's entirely possible that some users work in environments with Stalinist network administrators who block all ports except for 80 and 110 (web and POP mail), which is a hideous network anti-pattern that usually makes things less secure, not more, but it's their network, and they're the ones with the shiny MCSA certifications <snicker/>. For small projects, one workaround would be to just browse the CVS source with your browser. Another option is to host projects with the http-friendly Subversion, which java.net has supported for new projects for some time now (existing CVS-based projects have the option of freezing their old project and starting a new one that uses Subversion, or working with CollabNet on a fee-based conversion from CVS to Subversion).

As for all projects not providing binaries, it's not a given that every project should immediately (or ever) provide binaries. A just-launched project will probably need some time before its owners feel its ready to have a binary release. And many projects on the site have purposes other than creating binaries, such as projects to host JUG's, documentation projects like eclipse-tutorial, localization projects like the Simplified Chinese Translation of the JDK javadocs, etc.

It's also kind of interesting to note that some of the forgie-come-latelies, like Google Code Hosting and Mac OS Forge don't appear to have a release mechanism or web space at all. Both offer Subversion-based code repositories and a blog-like mechanism for one-way communication from project owners to the rest of the world. Google's also has a bug tracker. But at first glance, they don't appear to offer mailing lists, forums, wikis, a release mechanism, or webspace (outside of, say, creating a www directory within the project and handing out that URL, as both sites use http-based Subversion). They also seem uninterested in community, offering nothing that would bring together members of different projects, or lurkers who aren't even in projects. These are all things that we think distinguish java.net. Of course, if they're doing something right that we're doing wrong, please let us know.