I want to see you (open sourced on java.net).

In this case, I'm referring to the Java version of Karelia software's Watson application. Watson was originally designed to supplement Apple's Sherlock application (get it - Sherlock and Watson) and there was a big fuss when Apple's third generation of Sherlock looked remarkably like Watson. And yet, people liked Watson enough that they continued to pay for it even though the Apple alternative was bundled as part of the Mac. By the way, the actual quote in the title of this blog was "Mr. Watson - come here - I want to see you." Alexander Graham Bell's words to a different Watson.

Back in June, Kathy Brown posted a blog entry on the early progress with Project Alameda. At JavaOne and across the street at Apple's WWDC the reaction was mixed. People were happy for Dan Woods that he had sold Watson to Sun but worried that the application would disappear. Dan end-of-lifed Watson but was confident that the replacement would be available before Watson began to break down. The application pulls information from web pages. As the structure of these pages changes, updates to the plug-ins that read them are required. Contractually, Dan is not allowed to maintain Watson so that these plug-ins continue to work.

Watson has been one of my valuable, use-it-everyday applications and I was looking forward to seeing what Sun would do with it. After all, here was an opportunity to show the world that you could build first class attractive user interfaces with Swing. Alameda could have shown how we can use web services in a consumer application without being aware of the plumbing behind it. Alameda could have even been JXTA enabled so that the community could have pushed out plugins without the need for a centralized server.

But, as Dan blogged last week, "it looks like Sun doesn't seem to be focussing on getting the port of Watson released any time soon." He adds that part of his disappointment in not having Alameda released is that he was really pleased with how Alameda was turning out. Meanwhile in August, Kathy Brown blogged about an "an email from one of the folks that works on java.net. He got an inquiry about open-sourcing Alameda and was asking about the idea. The powers to be are pondering that one, and I don't have much insight into their decision-making, but it is an interesting idea."

The inquiry that was passed on to her came from me. At the time my suggestion was that Sun consider open sourcing Alameda. Whether they did or didn't, I wanted us to start a project on java.net for Alameda plugins. A month later Kathy blogged "I know that some people have been asking about Alameda. Truth is I don't know much about it's status, as I have been reorged away and taken on new work. If I hear anything that I will pass it along."

So that's why I write "Watson - come here - I need you." If Alameda is being abandoned, I would love to see it open sourced on java.net to see if the community can and will finish it. Thoughts?

In today's Weblogs Jonathan Bruce writes on JSR 114 and J2SE 5.0 Released saying " I've talked about JDBC RowSet Implementations and their general availability in in our Java Community Process release in addition to our Java Web Services Pack 1.4 Co-Bundle. With J2SE 5.0 now as a GA, production ready realease, our already broad user base can now enjoy JDBC RowSet Implementations as part of the core Java platform."

There is no rest for the weary. With Tiger out the door, Mark Reinhold says " Tiger is done! This seems an appropriate time to look forward, and in particular at some changes that we're making to the J2SE release model." Check the details in Tigers and Mustangs and Dolphins, Oh My!

James Gosling checks in with some thoughts on How I run Tiger "There have been a few questions on various blogs/forums asking how I run Tiger (J2SE 5.0), given that I use Mac OS X rather than a PC. Well.... I have a linux box and I use the X support on OS X. My linux box is out on the open internet and generally accessible via SSH tunnel."

In Also in Java Today , ONJava's excerpts from "Enterprise JavaBeans, 4th Edition" concludes with Developing Your First EJBs, Part 2. In this second installment, Bill Burke, Richard Monson-Haefel, and Sacha Labourey introduce a session bean to manage the entity bean presented in part 1, and a client application to excercise the session bean's business logic.

Michael Champion looks at the web services specs disputes between those crafting the WS-* family and those who advocate using HTTP and XML together in Bicycles, Trucks, and web services specs. He advises that " If people in the REST camp want to actually change minds rather than exchange virtual pats on the back in their echo chamber, they'll have to explain how to do the hard things RESTfully, not belabor the pointlessness of doing easy things with WS-*."

In Projects and Communities , J2SE for Linux, Solaris, and Windows is 24 hours old. Adrian Sutton writes give Apple time "to port the JVM and add in all the extra little details they provide" (e.g. a L&F), QA, and then release.

The NetBeans community announces that Beta 2 of their IDE v 4.0 is available for download and features more than 900 bug fixes since the Beta 1 release.

Guess we should all learn emacs. Iin today's Forums, JohnM writes "A corollary to Greenspun's Tenth Rule is that all "modern" IDEs eventually implement stuff (usually poorly) that's been in Emacs for ages."

In the Open Source: Not just hobbyists thread JWenting writes "As economic incentive to write software goes down because of large availability of free software, so does the incentive to learn to write software. In the end there will be noone left with the know-how to create and maintain the software needed."

Tobega corrects an earlier quote on security saying "You got the sense of it right, if not the wording Secrecy can't rely on the algorithm being secret."

In today's java.net News Headlines :

• J2SE 5.0 "Tiger"
• NetBeans IDE 4.0 Beta 2
• Subversion 1.1.0
• Agent Building and Learning Enviroment
• Microsoft FAT File System Patent Revoked

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