 |
| | | A Developer's Perspective | |
 | Daniel Spiewak is a Java developer and system administrator from Wisconsin, USA. He has over 7 years of experience in the field and specializes in UI design and peer-to-peer networking.. |
 Sun Open Sources JCK: That's Good, Right?
Congratulations Sun, you've managed to do it again! You've taken something I (and I'm sure a large number of others) was sure would never be free and open, and managed to hand it over to the community. Personally I think this is great news. I mean, the Java TCK had been one of Sun's most closely controlled properties. It was their main leverage in the fight against Microsoft way back when they tried to pass off their own, incompatible software called the "Microsoft VM". For those of you who don't know, the Java TCK, or the JCK, is the mechanism by which Sun is able to say a piece of software is "Java". Think of it as an incredibly massive test suite. Its purpose is to check every method and class in the Java API to make sure that it's faithful to the specification. It is this test suite that Sun uses on its own JRE implementation. Now it seems that anyone will be able to test their Java implementation against the golden standard and claim compatibility. Well, almost… Of course, Sun couldn't just hand something like this (and the trademark which goes along with it) to the community without any sort of guidelines and restrictions. In fact, there's a full blown license available here: http://openjdk.java.net/legal/openjdk-tck-license.pdf. This is actually fairly concise and worth the read if you're into knowing the ins and outs of software licensing. Anyway, the restrictions boil down to these two points (I'm not a legal expert, so don't hang me for inaccuracy): To run the JCK against your software (and thus to claim Java compatibility), your software must: - be licensed under GPLv2 with the classpath extension (semantically, the same license OpenJDK uses)
- be a substantial derivative of OpenJDK itself
So, bullet point one: licensing. This makes sense to me. The whole reason Sun released Java under the GPL license in the first place was to make sure that no one tried to fork it, insert nefarious changes and still claim compatibility. Under the GPL license, any derivative works must also be licensed under GPL. This way Sun ensures that any forks of the JDK are free and open, theoretically ensuring no underhanded redistribution from the boys in Redmond. It only makes sense that anything to receive the "Java" stamp of approval would also be constrained to this same restriction. Anyway it fits Sun's MO as it pertains to Java. The second stipulation is a little worrisome to me. By "substantial derivative work" they mean more than just borrowing a class or two. In fact, this actually means that most, if not all of the OpenJDK code is being used in this hypothetical "derivative work". By this, Sun is effectively ruling out projects like GNU Classpath, Apache Harmony and really any third party Java implementation which isn't completely based upon OpenJDK. This is a fairly serious restriction here. I hate to be cynical about this, but it seems to me that by restricting JCK usage to OpenJDK and derivatives, Sun is trying to make sure that they strictly control not only the definition of Java, but any Java implementations in future. This of course ensures that the meaning of the trademark "Java" doesn't degrade, but it also means that Sun still has a very tight grip on Java all future developments therewith. Is this a bad thing? Eh, the jury's still out on that; though if their attitude toward OSGi is any indicator, I'd be a little concerned. Actually, the people hardest hit by this announcement are the folks at Apache Harmony. This effectively seals the door on any faint hope they may have held out that their demands would be met. It doesn't mean that Harmony can never be JCK certified, it just means they'll have to bend their philosophical stance just a bit to do it. The Apache Geronimo project has just recently been certified under the JEE TCK, there's no reasons why Harmony can't go the same route. According to Rich Green of Sun Microsystems, Sun has even offered to help in the certification process and allow the royalty-free use of the Java trademark under the JCP Scholarship program. We'll have to wait and see if Apache takes Sun up on this. So, at the end of the day: qui bono (who benefits)? The answer is: the community. In complete fairness, Sun has shown a remarkable willingness to open up Java more and more and attempt to place it as much as possible into community hands. Obviously, they're still looking after their bottom line (Fortune 500 companies are like that), but they've gone out on a considerably long limb in the name of "clarity and transparency". They certainly shouldn't be faulted for the fact that they haven't pleased everyone. But in addition to philosophical victories for FSF and friends, this new Open Source JCK also means that we can see more and diverse "Java" implementations hitting the streets soon. As an example, imagine OpenJDK running on top of Kaffe or even JRocket. This is indeed a large step toward a totally free and open Java, which is itself a large step towards a more ubiquitous Java platform. And that has to be good for everyone, right? Share your thoughts here, at Javalobby: http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t99969.html Until next time,
Daniel Spiewak
daniel@dzone.com | | |
| | |
| | | Michael Urban develops applications using Java, Python, and C that assist in research involving African lions in Tanzania, East Africa. Michael Urban is also an editor at Javalobby and a technical writer who has written and done technical editing for Pearson Education. |
 BEA Runs Java On Bare (Virtual) Metal
Ed Burnette had an interesting blog entry today regarding BEA Weblogic Server Virtual Edition. This version of Weblogic doesn't run on top of any OS. Instead, it runs directly on top of an x86 hypervisor. A hypervisor is a very thin layer of software that runs on top of the hardware, creating multiple virtual instances of the hardware. It's generally used for applications such as virtual private servers where an OS such as Linux then runs on top of the hypervisor. BEA basically decided that as long as you are only running Java applications, you don't need the operating system. You can simply run the Java code directly on top of the hypervisor. Of course, for this to work, you have to take over some of the functions that the operating system would normally provide, and add them to your JVM, like thread scheduling for example. However, some JVMs on some machines already have to perform this task because the operating system doesn't support threads natively. So it's nothing new to ask the JVM to take over certain tasks like this. In the end, BEA's JVM that is responsible for this is called LiquidVM. It does all the regular things a JVM would do, plus it provides the additional OS services needed to run the applications while leaving out all unneeded services. BEA estimates that they can reduce resource consumption by 25-50%. Other than resource consumption reductions, there seems to be some other exciting possibilities here. One of the most exciting possibilities I can see for it is finally making low cost shared Java application hosting a reality. Everyone could have their own virtual private Java application server, without all the overhead of having a full OS running. Another benefit is that it eliminates all the hassles involved with maintaining the operating system, making sure all the latest security patches are applied, etc. A trial version of Weblogic Server Virtual Edition is available for download here. Swing: Powerful, Yet So Deficient In Some Ways
I was doing some Swing programming the other day, and I really started to think about how, yes, it is one of the most powerful GUI toolkits available in any language. But given that, there are some parts of it that seem remarkably deficient. In this case, the component I have in mind specifically is JTable. There is no doubt that JTable is a very powerful component. By using custom cell renderers and such, it's possible to do virtually anything with it. But its out of the box functionality is remarkably limited. For example, JTable has no ability to sort itself without doing a fair amount of custom work to add listeners to the column headers, add your own sorting algorithms, etc. Furthermore, programatically setting the widths of columns is fairly problematic. You can call setPreferredWidth() on the column, but unless you turn off auto-resizing, this behaves rather oddly since it only sets approximate widths, based on the widths set for all of the columns. So trying to set the column widths this way is a long trial and error process. Changing one column affects everything else. Turning off auto-resizing creates other problems of course, if the user resizes the table. There is no easy way to set a size for say, all of the columns except one, and then have the remaining column take up all the space that is left. Fortunately, at least on the sorting issue, JIDE Software came to my rescue. They were kind enough to donate their excellent Swing components to my non-profit project. I had dreaded adding sorting features to my table, but JIDE's grid components made it easy. Using their SortableTable() It took me less than 10 minutes to have my tables sorting by any column, in either direction. And I can even sort by multiple columns at the same time. That less than 10 minutes figure also included reading the documentation and looking at an example. Less than 10 minutes to add bi-directional multi-column sorting to a JTable. I'd have to say that's not too bad. Thanks to JIDE Software for the support. They really saved me a lot of time, and they do some awesome stuff with their Swing add-ons. Google Pack Quietly Adds StarOffice
It was almost two years ago when Sun and Google announced that they had come to a major partnership agreement. At the time, no details of the agreement were announced, but it received major press coverage and was hyped by both Sun and Google as something that was going to be extremely good for both of them. Shortly after, Sun and Google once again got the press buzzing, saying that they had a major announcement. There was lots of speculation that they were going to announce Google Office, which was going to be a Google version of StarOffice. But when the announcement was made, all we got was news that JRE downloads would come bundled with Google toolbar. In the end we were left wondering both A: What was the fuss all about? and B: How does Sun benefit? Well, a couple of days ago, Google Pack did make a Google version of StarOffice available for free. The Google version of StarOffice includes a Google search field on the toolbar. For whatever reason, this addition to Google Web Pack was made with very little fanfare, and without any real hype from either company at all. Only a quiet addition to Google's blog saying they had added it originally let people know it existed. Sun made no press release at all regarding the event as far as I can tell. Jonathan Schwartz didn't even mention it in his blog. Of course, the announcement did get picked up by the bloggers, so the word ultimately got out anyway. The fact that virtually no fanfare from either Sun or Google was given to this announcement leaves me wondering about the status of the Sun / Google partnership though. How relevant is it today? Kind Regards,
Mike Urban
murban@javalobby.org | | |
| |
| | | most clicked this week from dzone.com |
Most-clicked links this week |
| |
|
| |
| | | A recap of
some of the most popular and active Javalobby.org
discussions this week. |
| |
| | | Product and
service announcements for Java developers. |
|
GratePic 0.8 released
|
GratePic - a cross platform tool for posting, commenting and rating photos on flickr. It features a nice, task oriented user interface; based on the NetBeans platform.
| |
Full Announcement & Discussion |
Posted By: Leon Chiver - (0 Replies)
|
|
soapUI 1.7.5 final
|
eviware is happy to announce soapUI 1.7.5, which includes a large number of community requests/improvements and more power and productivity enhancements for soapUI Pro users.
| |
Full Announcement & Discussion |
Posted By: Ole Matzura - (0 Replies)
|
|
Glean v1.2
|
Glean is a framework of Ant scripts for generating feedback on a team's source code. Glean's goal is to make it possible to add feedback to your build cycle with as little pain as possible.
| |
Full Announcement & Discussion |
Posted By: John Brugge - (2 Replies)
|
| |
|
Back to newsletter list
Perspective
