It must be that time of the year again when everybody starts to talk about Sun open sourcing Java: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5].

However, there is something different this year. I don't know if you have noticed, but the main players seems to have changed their stances a little bit. The free software guys are resigned to the fact that Sun won't open source Java any time soon and are starting the post-game analysis:

Dalibor Topic (Kaffe, Harmony): So, here is a my take, why Sun will not, any time soon, release their Java implementation under an open source license,...

Chris Blizzard (Mozilla, Red Hat): So instead of just giving reasons of why they should do it, let’s instead talk about the cost of them not doing it...

The Sun guys, on the other hand, have softened from the "it's a bad idea and here's why" to something more neutral:

Tim Bray (Sun, via Dan Farber): So, I am definitely of two minds, and I'm not convinced that it will produce practical upside or developer benefit. But, we are not deaf. Legions of voices are crying out for it. At some point, you decide it's more important to make [the cries] go away.

David Herron (Sun): I absolutely cannot comment on the call for open sourcing Sun's Java implementation, so I won't.

Why the change? I don't know. But if I have to guess, I would venture to guess that it's because the free Java stack (GNU Classpath, Eclipse, gcj, kaffe, IKVM, etc., etc.) is working now, including generics and Swing. They are packaged with the freely downloadable Linux distributions such as Fedora Core 5, and Ubuntu.

The free Java stack may not be as performant and as compatible as Sun's JDK today. But if history is any guide, free software tend to out last their proprietary competitors and gain parity with the competition over time. How many of you remember what the top rated commercial editor/IDE was when GNU Emacs was first released? How many of you remember what the top rated commercial C compiler was when GNU C was first released? How many of you remember what the big three relational databases were when MySQL was first released?

Free software is forever.

Responses[2]

Posted by Weiqi Gao on March 31, 2006 9:46:13 PM CST #

(Oh boy, this live blog thing is catching on.)

In today's episode, I'm covering Eric Burke talking about his latest project—The (as of yet) Unnamed Wiki at the OCI internal Java lunch.

(An aside, my last blog entry was an marketing experiment. I've promised Fabian not to use the numerics trick in the future. However I have to make an exception for today.)

Three Quotes From Eric Burke

• WikiWordLooksStupidAndAreNotNormal
• You can't believe how easy it is to code up a custom tag. I use the Sun provided frameworks: Servlets and JSP. I don't need the bolt-on frameworks.
• I've used Spring in the past. Spring taught me how to write better code to the point that now I don't have to use Spring any more.

On with the talk (First person is Eric now.).

The Itch

• For every project I worked on, I have to manage documentations (requirements, etc.) On some projects I created web pages for that purpose. However I soon found out that people don't like to edit HTML pages. They just don't do it. They revert back to Word documents and email.
• Existing requirement management tools such as Doors or Caliber are proprietary and Windows only, and not easy to use. They produce Word documents.
• A Wiki is a good way of capturing project documentations. But the open source ones are all too hard to use, especially for non-geeks. The commercial ones, Confluence (really good) and JotSpot (the best wiki ever), are excellent but expensive.

The Goals

My goal is not to compete with some of the crappy open source Wikis, but to compete with the commercial Wikis.

• Easy for non-geeks
• WYSIWYG editing
• Image handling
• Email integration, even Word integration
• Make information findable, Google-quality search
• Open and extensible (Web services APIs)
• Tagging
• Customizable syndication everywhere
• Super easy to rename and arrange content
• Linking API

Mine is Better

• It will have integration built in
• It will be an application platform for building things like discussion forums
• It will have WYSIWYG editing
• It will have very easy page renaming
• It will have tags and feeds
• It will have Google like searches.

The Plan

• Data model is the key. I want to be able to rename pages and have the links automatically updated. And I want a solid data model from day one.
• Focus on usability.
• Web services integration API
• Open Source

The Technologies

• EJB 3
• Servlets
• JSP
• JSTL
• HSQLDB
• FCKEditor
• XFire

The Demo

I think people are going to like this.

(First person is Weiqi now.) I hope Eric can pull this off because I really really liked the demo.

Responses[1]

Posted by Weiqi Gao on March 31, 2006 3:01:32 PM CST #