Bruno F. Souza's Blog

Community: Java User Groups Archives

Taking NetBeans to the top of Java!

Tangkuban Perahu is an active volcano near Bandung, in the west part of the Java island, Indonesia. Its last eruption was in 1983, and since then, there has been warnings about possible new activity. It is a very impressive place, with high stone walls and constant steam coming out from its crater. When you bathe on the hot spring waters on the side of Tangkuban Perahu, you feel a tiny bit of the power of the volcano. But Tangkuban Perahu is a very accessible place, and is the only volcano in more then 350 active Indonesian volcanos that you can just drive all the way to the crater. Amazing power, but with simplicity.

NetBeans is a Java IDE, that combines amazing power, with simplicity. We just released NetBeans 6, and it is very good. The new editor infrastructure gives you a lot of productivity literally at your fingertips. Integrated JEE, JME, Profiler. Ruby support. All build on top of the NetBeans Platform, that lets you extend the IDE, or even create a totally new application on top of it.

Once you're in the Java island, it is very easy to go visit Tangkuban Perahu, so don't miss if you ever have the opportunity. I was there, talking about NetBeans in the top of the Java island. And once you're a Java developer, it is very easy to try out NetBeans. So, take it for a spin, the download is a lot faster then a flight to Indonesia! And it is free. As in beer. But it is also "bebas" (freedom in Indonesian) - NetBeans 6 is distributed under the GPL and CDDL licenses.

Many thanks to all of the developers that made such a great tool. The Sun engineers, the external contributors, the many translators and module developers. Also, the NetCAT team that is hunting for bugs and the NetBeans Dream Team that has participated a lot in many ways. And the many others that are part of this thriving community: NetBeans users, the web team, article writers, book writers, the NetBeans Magazine, the NetBeans TV, the NetBeans and Java User Groups, the NetBeans evangelists. Wow! Congratulations to all of you: it is a pleasure to be part of such a strong, active community.

And here, a small video with some other images of me and Juggy on the top of the Java Island:

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Bagels, Ariports and User Groups

I have been upset with myself for not blogging for way too long (not that I am a particular prolific blogger by any stretch of imagination...), and I wanted to return to the blogosphere. Well, once you are away for so long, any reason is a good reason to start, and I just found one.

A few hours ago I eat a bagel sandwich in Heatrow, the London airport. I always love the European sense of humor and specially the subtle british humor. Most developers that I know appreciate good humor, and it does remind me of Brazil, where, as we say there, we lose a friend, but never the opportunity of a joke. What this have to do with a bagel sandwich? Well, the one I had in London came in a kind of paper "plate", and if you turned the plate upside down, on the bottom you could read:

"Sorry Mate, your beagle's either on the other side, or you've lost it"

This did crack me up, specially the more "legalese" part in small letters, that they referred as "American Translation". I was needing something to make me laugh: I had just missed my connection to Moscow, and was waiting to get a plane to Istanbul, Turkey. I'm trying to get to Rostov-on-Don, a city in the south of Russia, where I'm an invited keynote speaker at the Rostov CIO Summit.

Because I lost my connection, had I kept on my original course trough Moscow, I would arrive there too late to my other connection, where I would also change airlines. From past experience, this is where you fall in "no-airline-land", and not only I would end up spending the night in Moscow, I would be without any support or hotel. Not a good idea. I'm glad that Isabella, a nice and helpful British Airline operator, was very understandable and spent almost an hour with me, checking on my flight options.

So, as I type this, I'm in Istanbul, Turkey, just passing through. Not a good way to see anything, but I can say that the airport here is amazing: I'm just in the international area, and this place is not only huge, but very beautiful, with large corridors, and very nice shops.

But, the main reason why I'm writing this is to talk about User Groups. What bagels and missed planes have to do User Groups amazes even me, but for the past several weeks, I have been in such a crazy schedule of travels, visiting so may cities and User Groups, that they are all intermixed.

While I'm going to Russia, I'm taking a few days break from the "Caravana da Tecnologia", a joint effort of several Java, Open Solaris and Linux User Groups in Latin America, Sun and many Universities, to discuss open source initiatives around Java and Open Solaris. During the course of the "Caravana", we're visiting 4 countries, 12 cities, more then 30 universities. And of course, many User Groups. But staying for a single day in each city does not allow us to see much, mostly airports (and an eventual bus station or two...)

You should take a look at what the other speakers are saying about this joint effort. We had lots of fun, from eating shrimp with the JavaBahia JUG in Brazil, playing "futebol" (yes, yes, soccer) with the JUG in Uruguay and dining steak with the Linux Group in Argentina. But also, lots and lots of work, including giving 10 hours of talks right after an 11 hours bus trip between Buenos Aires and Cordoba, with only a quick shower in between (our flight was canceled because of some kind of trouble with pilots in Argentina). It has been very rewarding to work closely with the User Groups in this trip, and we are learning how we can collaborate even more. Juggy has been around too, as well as Jack Adams.

During this year there was a lot going on around User Groups. Both in collaboration among Java User Groups, the fast evolution of the Open Solaris User Groups Communities, and even a much closer relationship between Java, Linux and Open Source User Groups, that was promoted with the release of Java as GPL in the beginning of the year.

And lots more are coming along before the year ends: BeJUG and SouJava have just proposed a JSR to the JCP (still pending if it will be approved or not, but even if it is not, the organization needed to make this happen is the important thing here), and BeJUG is promoting the JavaPolis event in a few weeks, where JUGs from all over the world are already organizing a large encounter. PanamaJUG is joining many Latin American JUGs in their event in December, while the Brazilian NatalJUG hosts a 2 days event in one of the most beautiful beach cities in the world. Lets not forget that IndonesiaJUG organizes, together with the Indonesian Government, a large event in the Java island. The Open Solaris User Groups have a new home in opensolaris.org, what is helping grow the community, and the collaboration among User Groups can be seen in the JUGs Map, and discussions around common projects like the Event Manager tool and the certificate generator.

With all that, I'll spend a few days in Russia, and then will head back to visit a couple more cities and user groups. While I'm away, Caravana da Tecnologia goes on, and visits the Brazilian cities of Florianopolis and Natal. I wish I could be in all of those places and initiatives. But I'm glad I can't -- they are actually too many for anyone to be able to follow them all. This is the beauty of communities, user groups and open source: they are much larger then the sum of all parts. You should add yourself to it too!

Moving to NetBeans

No, I'm not changing IDEs, I'm already a NetBeans user. But after 6 years, I'm coming back to work for Sun Microsystems, and have just joined the NetBeans Team.

I had a great time working at Sun in the past. I started in 1995, just a couple of weeks before Java was publicly announced, and was lucky enough to spend the following 5 years dedicating my work and a good deal of my personal life to the technology. At that time, Java was released "with source code". That was quite a mind-boggling news, not to mention the similar alien notion of platform independence. That was a life-changing event, that eventually did change the world. In the years that followed we had long discussions about freedom of choice. And I like to think that this helped a lot the later development of the open source community, and also the growth of Linux.

In Brazil, this was certainly true. When Java was launched, very few companies and developers acknowledged that other platforms beside Microsoft even existed. During years of Java evangelism we struggled with companies that wouldn't understand why platform independence was even an issue... Some did, and were very successful. And it was a pleasure to work with companies like Brazil's largest bank, Banco do Brasil, that in 1996 started its move to Java technology, training over 2000 developers and investing strongly in Java development. Many others made similar investments, including many government agencies that were looking for freedom of choice. Years later, when Linux started to became attractive, those Java early-adopters were able to immediately move their applications to Linux, and that fueled the Brazilian Software Livre revolution.

I left Sun to go help large companies like those to successfully use Java in order to create innovative solutions. Working for Summa Technologies, a consulting company focused in Java development, I had the opportunity to work in some very large and challenging Java projects, that had strong influence for the evolution of Java in Brazil.

While outside of Sun, as leader of a very active Java User Group, SouJava, I helped support the pioneer work done by the Brazilian Software Livre community. These guys changed the country, and maybe a bit of the world. I'm honored to be part of it, helping to integrate the Brazilian Java Community into the effort. SouJava also helped to construct a long-term strategy for software development in Brazil, by promoting the adoption of royalty free standards, implemented as open source software and supported in multiple platforms. This gives the long-term freedom and choice needed by Brazilian companies and also the government, that were badly burned by the predactorial market tactics of you-know-who.

After promoting the merits and even supporting the creation of open-source licensed Java Runtimes, and specially helping to bring people together on this discussion, I'm coming back to Sun right on time for more mind-boggling news-- the release of the JDK as OpenJDK.

This is a special moment for Sun, and especially for NetBeans. The NetBeans Community is growing worldwide; the new version (5.5) just came out and is getting strong adoption. Java 6 is nearly out and the platform is finally open source. There's a lot of excitement around the technology. For me, it feels like starting all over, like in 1995. As NetBeans Community Manager, I'll be able to work on things I'm passionate about, especially Java User Groups, the Open Source Community and the Java Developer Community. Could I ask for more?

To be honest, I'm still trying to figure out where I should start. I have some very initial thoughts, but I'd love to hear your opinions on what needs to be done, fixed, improved, expanded or even left as is inside the NetBeans Community. I'll try my best to make it a better, stronger, empowered community.

Thank you!

(PS.: Roman Strobl was kind enough to interview me for his great Podcast series. In the interview, we discussed some ideas and initial plans for working with the NetBeans Community. You can hear the interview here, but be warned that it was recorded before the open sourcing of Java, so, a few things may have changed since then...)

Open Source, Standards and Compatibility: Software Freedom, is this a valid concept?

I have been discussing for a long time how only open source is not enough for Governments. Although open source is a strong point of freedom it allows you to end up tied to a product, what may be not as bad as being tied to a vendor, but may bring you the same types of problems, specially if you are the government. But this is true for companies also.

In November 2002, me and several others from the Java Users Society, a large Java User Group in Brazil, created a long manifesto (Portuguese only), that tried to look into the discussion on open source usage by the Brazilian Government, from the point of view of the software developed by the government, that needs to rely on Open Standards and focus to be Multiplatform. This later turned into a well reviewd article, that better explained the ideas, and even featured concrete examples of the problems that you may face when all you care about is open source. Unfortunately for the time being both of these discussions are in Portuguese. Trying to explain a long article in a few lines is not easy, but the central idea is simple: open source is very important to the government, and to do it right, the government would be better off if it developed it's own software using open source software that are based on standards, and by developing multiplatform software, as a way to minimize lock in, and as such, maximize government freedom to decide it's technological future.

Maximizing freedom is usually not easy, and some difficult strategic decisions must be made. In regards to open source, it may mean for example, that the government will not use software that runs only on windows, or only on Linux (or any single platform), no matter how much this particular product's license says it is open source.

After discussing with the government for so long, and after seeing most of this discussion accepted in some very important areas of the Brazilian Government, we learned that governments really need a broad guarantee of freedom. Their systems, applications, data and software in general have such a long life, and may have such a large impact on a country's future, that by comparison, vendors and products need to be looked at as temporary at best. Although we have defended this idea for the sake of the Brazilian Government, I think this applies to most governments, and also to most companies that somehow develop software internally: minimizing the lock in for the software you write, will pay off in the future.

Now, someone that has also be giving a lot of though about this discussions, has come up with a name for this broad guarantee of freedom: Software Freedom.

In his recent blog, Simon Phipps explains that Software Freedom is more then the freedom for developers (that is guaranteed by open source), it needs to also guarantee freedom for users (deployers) and vendors. Simon calls for a combination of open source, standards and compatibility to guarantee Software Freedom. Although he has named it, and written a kind of manifesto, I think that the Sincere Choice movement has similar views, although they do not mention certification explicitly as Simon does.

At first, this seems quite a task. How can you guarantee freedom to the developer, if you tie him with standards and compatibility requirements? How can you guarantee freedom for the deployer if you cannot restrict what developers can do? How you can innovate if you tie up your own hands trough standards? Hard questions. Can they be answered? Are those things so contradictory that we cannot guarantee all types of freedom at once?

In the Brazilian Government discussion, we are proposing ways to to that based on policies. That is, software developed by the government has to use standards if they are available, and if not, standards need to be either chosen or defined. It has to run in multiple platforms, no matter what technology or language you use to develop it. And open source implementations of those standards will be the ones that will provide greater freedom, and as such should be chosen if available. Is this enough? Probably not. But it is a good start.

From a first look, it seems that guaranteeing Software Freedom is not something that could be done by licenses only. And there are other important matters like Royalty Free standards and patents policies that would probably play a role in the discussion (but this would extend a lot this blog...).

I hope this idea is something that the community at large sees as important. I certainly agree with Simon and his Software Freedom Manifest, and from my experiences with government and companies, I agree that something must be done to guarantee other perspectives of freedom that not only the developer's freedom.

Of course, this has a large impact on Java.. The Java Community is largelly in favor of certification and compatibility, and this is said to be one of the main reasons why Sun refrains from releasing it's Java implementation as open source. Would Simon's blog be an indication that there can be ways of open sourcing Java that maintain compatibility? Can this be accepted by the open source community? Although I myself think that no matter what Sun does, we should create and support an open source implementation of Java, like a combination of Kaffe and Classpath for instance, I also do value compatibility more then "open source just to be open source". And I think that Simon's proposition could be one that we, as a joint Java-Open Source community, should look and discuss open minded.

Fortunatelly, Simon will be in Brazil this week for the 5th International Free Software Meeting, and I will have a premium chance to discuss with him this ideas. Hopefully, we can have an open discussion with both the free software community members and the Java community members present at this large event, and understand if this can lead us anywere.

The Strength of Java Users Groups

One of the most influential computer communities in our days is clearly the Free Software Community. It is interesting to see how a community that started with the idea of developing a free source operating system, and has organized itself around software projects, turned into a worldwide force, both technically and also politically, with influences seen in so many places, from small to big companies, from governments to social projects. And it is a community created and grown by its users, and not only by companies or commercial interests.

What I notice, at least in Brazil, is that although the community is organized around free software projects, the impact that it has is in good measure caused by the strong work done by their Users Groups, that are responsible for promoting events, meetings and discussions. Although the projects are were most of the work happens, Users Groups give everybody a focus point, a "real world" support, that expands the reach of the community beyond the "virtual world".

Can we, in the Java community, learn anything from this example?

Many free and open source projects are developed in Java, and as such there's an overlap of those communities. The Java Community -- being formed by developers -- is also somewhat organized around software projects. And many see the Java Community Process as our "real world" existence. The JCP is the gathering that we have for defining our standards, were we as a community meet to agree on our differences. But the JCP is our technical, higher level community effort, it cannot reach the day-to-day developer, that's looking for learning, sharing and peer support.

Java Users Groups, on the other hand, are groups formed specifically for those community activities. This is the place were users, not companies, go to learn and discuss, and share experiences. Where people go to eat pizza, drink beer and talk about their use of Java, their success and frustrations.

JUGs can provide the capillarity to reach developers worldwide, and to expand the reach of our community. This, we are doing, and the list of nearly 500 JUGs on http://servlet.java.sun.com/jugs/worldwide.jsp shows that the Java Community is everywhere. And from our experience in Brazil, this listing is even far from complete!

But are we doing more then reaching developers? Being an active participant of this community, I have the feeling that we're not making the best use of our strength.

When I go to Free Software events, I see both the technical, project related debate, but also the political, ethics, government, organizational, educational and social discussions. Are we, in the JUGs, doing the same? Are we discussing the many other aspects of our technology? If we believe that "Java is Everywhere", and that it will affect our lives (and not only as technologists), I think we should be more active in discussing how will this happen.

How can we channel the efforts of thousands of Java developers that congregate in JUGs to improve our technology? Can JUGs drive a stronger participation in the JCP? Are we even happy with our role in the JCP? What's our opinion in the "Java and free software" discussion? Can we make a difference in reaching the 10 million developers goal? What about the use of Java in our schools and in our government? In short, how can we participate and help drive Java's future?

Some can argue that we already have a strong participation, since anyone can join and discuss in the JCP, we have forums like JavaLobby, and we can create and join projects and communities in java.net. There's even a strong presence of JUGs in java.net. All of this is great, and shows that we do have many tools to help us in our tasks. But I think that we can, and should, do much more.

JUGs are a fundamental part of the Java Community, and their importance is probably underestimated. There must be a better understanding of our community, and a better focus of our strength. And this is not going to work if someone try to do it for us, so, we better start doing it ourselves.

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