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May 2006 Archives
JCP Wants You, Sort Of, It Thinks...
Posted by arnold on May 18, 2006 at 09:31 AM | Permalink
| Comments (26)
The Java Community Process -- they want you, but it seems like they still don't
quite know what to do with you.
As I briefly mentioned in a previous blog, the JCP people want you to sign
up as an individual member. And you should, really, it's a good thing.
But that's not good enough -- if you're going to be there you ought to count more.
The final decision maker in the JCP is the
Executive Committee (EC), one for ME and one for SE and EE. Each EC has 16
members, and here they
are.
You can see that the EC for J2EE has two actual individuals. J2ME has none.
So as individuals you have (maybe you've already done the math) 2 of 32
members. While this is a nice, comforting pair of powers of two, it tells you
where you are.
This is fundamentally broken. It is broken in two major ways:
Obviously there are simply too few actual individuals on the EC. The
two J2EE members are both very good people who deserve our admiration and
thanks. But the principles of the
process say that the ECs represent "a cross-section of both major
stakeholders and other members of the Java community". Two of sixteen in one
case, and zero of sixteen in another, isn't much representation for us
individuals who are being pushed to sign up. If we sign up, where is our
practical representation as major stakeholders?
More subtle, 30 members are companies. People show up to represent
them, but it is (say) IBM that is a member of the J2EE EC, not the current
human being they ask to do that job. What this means is that even for the
commercial stakeholders, only a very, very few actually get representation in
the final decisions.
In political terms, this is an oligarchy, a governing system where the
final decisions are in the hands of an elite. This is further reinforced by
the selection model. Sun gets one seat. Five seats are elected. The other
ten are nominated by Sun and ratified (or, theoretically, not) by members. In
other words, these ten are chosen by one-candidate elections.
Or to put it another way, if the individual members rose up in unison, we
could elect, at most, five of sixteen members. For the rest we would have to
vote down company after company, or person after person, until Sun nominated them someone we wanted.
Or, more simply, it's "You discuss, we decide."
As individuals we should join, but the JCP needs a more open system that
allows all stakeholders, not primarily the largest, a part in the final
decisions. More members should be elected. Equally important, it should be
people on the EC, not companies. Yes, people should be elected to
represent commercial interests. A person with good understanding of the
telecommunications industry, say, could be elected, and while they might be
employed by one company, they should be expected to represent a set of
commercial interests that elect them, not just that one company.
The Jini Decision Process has many
different requirements so is probably not simply transplantable. But it has a
system that has individuals elected by both commercial and individual blocks.
This gives it a structure that represents more stakeholders at the top.
Politically, the technical term for this is "representative democracy".
Or, as it is commonly known, "The worst form of government. Except all
the others." It is time for a less worse form of governance in the JCP.
A Second Language for the JVM!!
Posted by arnold on May 16, 2006 at 01:44 PM | Permalink
| Comments (9)
Graham Hamilton today said that with Visual Basic, we now have a second language for the JVM! As if that's new!
One web page lists nearly 200 languages, most custom or unknown (Jacl, E, yoyo) but many well known (Ada, COBOL, forth).
I suppose for marketing reasons this might be a good thing to say because the market has ignored this. And Graham is right that extending the VM to support other kinds of languages is a very good thing to do. But let's not forget the actual state of the world.
Getting underway
Posted by arnold on May 16, 2006 at 11:24 AM | Permalink
| Comments (1)
Nice music. No network. Blog as if there was one...
Every year they don't start this on time, and every year I show up on time
anyway. Every year they do something interesting with the music. Sometimes
more interesting than music, but this year definitely not. World fusion (isn't
all music these days?).
Ah, the lights dim, time (one assumes) to see the promo intro.
Yup, promo intro. Theme this time: Cute. Oh, actually it's real people
doing real things, no doubt all enabled by Java, though Bozo alone knows how.
But it's cute, real people.
And now, John Gage -- back again! He always makes this thing work. He
does look older. Of course, I don't... He keeps the edge off the thing
becoming boring, that edge that something exciting is still going on. In the
first days it was obvious. Now you have to work at it, but it's there. And
John brings it out.
Ah! Jini! He mentioned the get-together last night. Subversive guy.
I understand what they're trying to do with the mandatory schedule builder
thing, but I only plan some sessions. I often figure out on the moment which
one I'm going to. I wonder how that will work given that I "must" use Schedule
Builder.
"Beautiful systems" says Grady Booch. Good for him. Software done right
includes aesthetics, not just for the pleasure of it, but because
well-engineered systems are beautiful and poorly engineered systems are ugly. I've said so myself
CEO Schwartz.
"Free Niagara" box. Go to the sun web site. He says.
Shilling for the Java Community Process individual membership. They'd
better be shifting how it works -- the overall board has been
owned by companies, not individuals. So we can all join and vote and talk, but
unless they have changed things, the final decision is in the hands of the board.
(If the network was working in here I could find this out before posting, hint,
hint.)
Zander's back on stage for a change. Still has a good suntan...
Ah, the first of the pseudo-conversations. "So, what's going on at
Motorola?" This was not (I'm sure you'll be shocked) a surprise question.
Call me a cynic...
The Dukies look nice this year.
Canonical: Linux on Niagara sounds nice. Ubuntu on servers sounds nice.
Marc Fleury: JBoss joining NetBeans. Need a company behind any
successful open source software? People see what they want to see.
Rich Green, back at Sun.
"Open Source Java?" asks Jonathan of Rich... Hand wave, hand wave, mumble
mumble.. "I will go figure that out: It isn't a question of 'Whether' but a
question of 'How'." (Will D.C. climb back on that bronco?)
Handoff of the show itself to Rich? Interesting...
Get the Java EE new standard team up on stage. And who is it? Why, it's
a group of individuals -- who represent companies. More cynicism, I know, but
if individuals are so important, where are the individual developers on this
team?
Now the VP of Java. Handoff again. Tag team shows lose focus, but it's
hard to put in everything that needs to be here (not to mention everyone with
pull who wants to be there).
Ah, here come the canned demos. More canned dialog too, I'm sure.
(Canned demos are inevitable because who wants to be the demo that doesn't
work? Canned conversation is, too, but it's more wince-worthy.)
GlassFish seems very interesting. All open source. Have to try this
puppy out.
The problem with all these demos is that you don't know what's canned and
what's actually easy for me. The Ajax stuff, for example -- how much work was
it hooking it up to google maps? Is that programmed in, or did they set that
up in advance, but I'd have to do it myself? And so on. Clarity about this is
really helpful, but it's really rare. I honestly have very little idea what work these
tools would save me because I can't tell the two apart.
Uh, .Net/JavaEE interoperability in partnership with MicroSoft? What
nefarious plot is this? ;-) Tango is a cute project name -- too cute, really,
but at least it's not boring.
OK, I'm already bored with the name "Tango". I take it back.
OK, the rose in the teeth -- a couple points for the Tom Lehrer reference.
Nobody around me even knows the name of this next project on display. They lost folks --
too many things one after the other, especially that aren't that far apart in the
application area.
Oh boy, graphical programming. Works in the small, fails in the large,
always has. People keep repeating the same attractive errors. Insurance
there is a notion of an "attractive nuisance", something that entices people to
do something that is bad for them. Maybe we need to have a
list of known software attractive nuisances.
BEPL Engine, that's what the project is.
Battery running low, damn. I'll blame it on them for starting late and
running late. Must be their fault...
"OpenJava EE". I guess you gotta have a new name or marketing hasn't done
its job.
John Gage back, finally.
Now to find juice and network! And see if I can sneak into a session unscheduled! I've left bail money with a friend...
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