Will Sun use GPLv3? (November 20, 2006)

Some people have been throwing rocks at the GPLv3 process from outside, and others have been accusing Sun of joining the rock throwers by opting for GPL v2 for the Java platform. Here's why I disagree with both.

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Why Bother Open Sourcing Java? (August 18, 2006)

While the actual code-base will only be touched by the 400, the 4 million will benefit from the extended deployment range, the greater pool of expertise and the greater diversity of interests that will result. Open sourcing Sun's Java implementations is hard, has risks and affects only the 400 now, but it will quickly grow benefits that the 4 million will reap.

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An Ongoing Process (August 15, 2006)

I briefed press an analysts in London to provide an update on the process of taking Sun's Java implementations open source. It's worth noting that this is part of an ongoing process that reflects Sun's roots.

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Respecting The Developers (July 25, 2006)

So why doesn't Sun just pick an OSI-approved license, apply it to the Java source code and be done with it? Why claim it's so hard to open source the Java platform?

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Forks Aren't a Problem (May 26, 2006)

I keep hearing people claiming that the biggest problem that would be caused by making Sun's Java SE implementation open source is forking. But I have to disagree. The implication is that all forks are incompatible forks, but the two are not synonyms.

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No Unfair Advantage (May 24, 2006)

There are two dimensions to compatibility. The one everyone with developer genes can grok is about having the same APIs doing the same thing everywhere the word "Java" is used to describe a virtual machine environment. The other is more subtle. It's about ensuring no major vendor - Sun included - gets an unfair advantage in the market because they have been able to exert control in a way that yields a competitive benefit.

Event:

JavaOne Bloggers' Social

Venue

Thirsty Bear Brewing Company

Date & Time

5:30pm-7pm, Tuesday, May 16 2006

Registration:

Please register!

I am expecting some very interesting guests; if you have a blog somewhere you would be most welcome to join us.

A lot of this growth spurt occurred shortly after JavaOne and the new Tiger release, which happened around that time. All of the top titles were revised, and saw a healthy sales increase as a result. However, when we analyzed new books (versus revisions), it appears that a substantial portion of Java's sustained growth, outside of the classic titles, has come from books on Open Source Java projects, such as Spring, Struts, Lucene, and AspectJ, which collectively performed at nearly double the unit and revenue volumes of new books on their non-Open Source counterparts.

For me, this discovery is very significant. There are plenty of people around talking about "what's next after Java" (there's even an interesting O'Reilly book about it), but it seems to me that the growing trend is not the search for new languages but rather the creation of collaborative communities around the technologies people need to evolve software development. I have said before that programmers don't program using languages, they program by connecting libraries with languages. The delightful growth of Java-based open source communities seems to underline that. I'm not saying we don't need new languages (I wouldn't have advocated the Coyote project if I thought that) but rather that languages aren't the only or even main key to programmer productivity.

JUG Power

To give you an idea of the strength of the Java community in Brazil, the world's largest Java User Group is based there. The Sociedade de Usários Java, "SouJava"¹ boasts almost 18,000 members and has now spread from its original base in São Paulo to be a national organisation (one of the two Java user groups in Brasília affiliated with it last week at Cafe Brasil taking its reach even further). And SouJava is just one of the Java User Groups in the country - there are many others, each doing excellent work with a huge community invested with the usual Brazilian enthusiasm and energy.

Last year, a group of Brazilians formed the Javali project², an ambitious project (with source hosted here on java.net) to create the software needed to faciliate the government vision of an inclusive, technology-assisted future society in Brazil. All the software in that project - from digital TV to a JRE - will be Free software under open source licenses. The project was launched with a day conference alongside the huge international FISL free software conference.

Back in January SouJava joined the Java Community Process, having incorporated as a non-profit organisation partly for that purpose. That step augmented the (already strong) presence of Brazilians in the JCP, where they are part of a small and exclusive club of individual experts serving on JSR expert groups. I was very impressed when SouJava did that, because it meant the experience they were gaining through the Javali project could be shared with the global Java community.

Then a few weeks ago the president of SouJava, Bruno Souza, was elected to the new board of the Open Source Initiative. At one stroke, OSI gained a representative from the developing world, a passionate Java advocate and the leader of a huge freedom community. I think they made an excellent choice.

Government Engagement

Last week, the Café Brazil event brought together politics and philosophy to accompany open source Java software. I was privileged to join a stellar line-up of speakers in front of a huge and energetic audience in Brasília. We heard from James Gosling, from Sergio Amadeu (president of ITI and advisor to the Brazilian government on ICT), from Onno Kluyt of the JCP, from Dalibor Topic (maintainer of the GPLed Kaffe virtual machine), from Tim Boudreau of NetBeans and many others. I spoke about the philosophy and model of open source that underlies Sun's extensive open source activity³. The event was followed by days of training in Java technology and the Netbeans Platform and was the fruit of months of work by its organisers, who did a splendid job.

The event reflects the fact that the Java platform is used extensively throughout the country, both for private and for government applications. Java applications provide the perfect vehicle for development alongside the extensive use of open systems such as the Solaris and Linux variants of Unix. Open systems like these are set to become more and more common in a society that has rejected Microsoft's products so assertively that the only path left for the head of Microsoft Brazil is to attempt libel actions against government employees. Using the Java platform allows application development to proceed independently of platform selection, allowing free choice rather than the usual "platform defines tools defines architecture" lock-in.

Although there are extensive civil systems (especially at the banks), the crowd in Brasília was dominated by federal employees working on Java systems. As examples, the Ministry of Health has a huge and innovative project that was recognised with a Duke Award at last year's JavaOne conference, and the Ministry of Finance uses a Java system to allow connected Brazilians to file their taxes, including from their mobile phones - James Gosling tried the application last week and was bowled over by it.

Growing the JCP

So to the new news, which I already flagged in my Sunmink blog. The agency responsible for that tax filing system, SERPRO, has applied to join the JCP. That makes the Brazilian government the first in the world to join the JCP in such a significant way. There was a high-profile announcement of this at Café Brasil, featuring Onno Kluyt for the JCP.

I think this is a huge step for the JCP. Gaining global developer involvement from SouJava was important, but the addition of such an important end-user government adds a depth the JCP has lacked. Moreover, the stance of the Brazilian government in treating software as a primary issue of sovereignty, with open source as its main expression, makes their membership a profound validation of the steps the JCP is taking towards open source. While nay-sayers worldwide strain over semantic gnats, the irrepressible Brazilians get on with spearheading open source Java initiatives. SouJava, SERPRO, Brazil - you are most welcome, thank-you for your commitment.

For more background, see my SunMink blog.]]> 2008-01-02T17:34:39Z 2004-06-23T03:36:00Z tag:weblogs.java.net,2004:/blog/webmink/26.366 2004-06-23T03:36:00Z

Today, as the announcement of the availability of OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 goes out, I'm thinking of Claudio and the people like him around the world. Teams like Claudio's are the unsung heroes of code. The real success of OpenOffice.org is the fact that small teams in 36 projects are diligently creating the local language versions of OpenOffice.org that will bring it to millions around the world in their own language. Claudio explained to me that it wasn't just a matter of translating the text to the words everyone else uses in the computer world; his team strives to use authentic Brazilian expressions and break the linguistic hegemony of American English.

The fact that it's open source means every language group can have its own word processor, not just the ones that corporations think they can profit from. This, by the way, is why we need format standards - not for the people who have the wealth to create a custom schema but to include into the community those with economies too small to be worth exploitation.

[Other Brazil posts: Java Everywhere, A Government That Gets It, WIPO, Smooth, Drinks, In Translation - also posted to Webmink]

The next question is, how does open source get reported? By definition, open source draws no licensing revenues and by definition carries a 0% market share. Is it just me or am I right in saying that it just feels wrong to be basing an important decision on a report that cannot accurately describe the usage of all the offerings in the space that is being considered?

Kirk has no ideas how else to handle the problem, of course, but he does think it may be a sign of the maturity of J2EE that the problem exists:

What it does say is that our choice of application server almost seems random, which is what you'd expect to see in a commoditized market where you should not find any differentiating factors between competing products. If I recall correctly, this was one of the original objectives behind the J2EE.

[Also posted to Webmink]

I would never have read the comment (about wanting to use trackbacks and blog-hosted discussion) if I hadn't just stumbled across it, and if a newcomer to our conversation wanted to see what had come before s/he would stand no chance of finding all the blogs involved and threading together the comments in an order that made them intelligible. The discovery seemed to me to demonstrate the problem with a blog-centric approach to conversation (something that's bugged me for ages)

I believe the ideal flow goes like this instead:

1. An initiator makes a statement on their blog and either it is carried on an aggregator shared by the community (in our case, the internal equivalent of PlanetSun) or it is copied to a suitable mailing list/forum.
2. Others comment on the posting on the mailing list/forum
3. From time to time, the conversation reaches a point where a small-scale refactoring is needed or a new substantial point needs to be made. These are posted to one of the participants' blogs and a link is posted to the conversation.
4. Steps 2 and 3 iterate until the conversation starts getting structure
5. One of the participants refactors the conversation into a wiki page
6. Participants in the conversation edit the wiki page and discuss the edits on the mailing list/forum. It may at times be necessary for a participant to make a blog entry with significant new information, but in general the discussion is now forum & wiki rather than blog & forum
7. The discussion gradually tails off as the wiki entry now represents the shared knowledge of the community represented by the discussion participants.

[Also posted on Webmink]]]>