ERIC BRUNO'S BLOG

Java: The Daily Grind.

November 2006

Now that Java is open-source, will Eclipse take over?

If you’re wondering how I made that leap, let me explain. Do you know why Sun never joined the Eclipse Foundation, and instead chose to spend time, money, and resources building up NetBeans to catch up to it? It’s because the one who controls the Java developer community (through tools) controls Java. Up until now, while Eclipse indeed has had the momentum, Sun has had the advantage of controlling each release of Java.

Now, with the Java GPL license, that’s all changed. If Eclipse wants to extend its lead, and truly control the Java community, it should take Java and bundle its own version along with Eclipse. Over time, the Eclipse Foundation can make its own changes to Java to suit the Eclipse community’s needs. If it does this, Eclipse will own the Java community, and then truly control the future of Java.

What about NetBeans?

Sun will continue to control the releases of Java for at least the next two releases. With recent releases, Sun has done a good job of integrating NetBeans with the Java packages, both SE and EE. Combine this with the improvements Sun has made to its NetBeans Mobility Pack for Java ME-based devices and NetBeans promises to grow its market-share of the Java developer community. There’s a real show-down coming up in the near future between Eclipse and NetBeans.

This raises an interesting question. What other communities have the potential to rise up through the bundling of open-source Java with other related technologies? Could IBM or BEA attempt the same thing with their products’ communities? Perhaps the future of Java will be similar to present-day Linux, with communities built around custom distributions that add their own value to Java (such as IDEs, application servers, and so on). Is this good or bad? Let me know what you think.

-EJB

Posted by Eric Bruno at 10:21 PM  Permalink |

Borland integrates with Eclipse, and floats its tools division as CodeGear.

In a press release issued today, Borland has announced the formation of CodeGear, a wholly-owned subsidiary, which will contain Borland’s Developer Tools Group. CodeGear will be its own company with its own direction and will take on development of Borland’s C++, C#, Delphi, Interbase, and JBuilder tools. This move will include the eventual re-branding of these development tools.

In a nutshell, Borland has focused on becoming an application lifecycle company, while CodeGear will focus solely on developers and development tools. Besides the list of existing Borland products above, CodeGear plans to introduce a new family of rapid-application development (RAD) tools around PHP, Ruby, and Ajax.

JBuilder 2007

The next release of JBuilder will be a CodeGear re-branded offering that breaks from its past, and is now integrated with the open-source Eclipse IDE. Borland has not been blind to the shift to open-source servers, frameworks, and developer tools over the past few years. However, they also note that there is still a need for support and integration with these tools. CodeGear JBuilder 2007 aims to fill this need.

The next release of JBuilder will include tools to aid distributed software development teams. The need for these tools has grown with the use of offshore programmers, through acquisitions, work-from-home employees, and even within the office environment itself. These tools include:

- LiveSource – A two-way modeling tool that is UML v2-compliant. This tool supports full round-trip engineering (UML to code; back to UML; to code again; and so forth) without the use of code markers or special files in your project.

- EJB Workbench – A visualization tool for Java web service and EJB development. This tool supports full round-trip engineering, helps the developer transform seamlessly from EJB 2 to EJB 3, and supports annotations, deployment descriptors, and XDocLet.

- Project Assist and Team Insight – A suite of team communication, bug tracking, and project tracking tools for large-scale application development. The tools include the integration and packaging of a set of over 20 open-source development tools, such as BugZilla and SubVersion, to quickly help new developers assemble their application development environment.

Overall, CodeGear JBuilder 2007 has attempted to strike the right balance between open-source and commercial software, by providing developers and development teams with the enterprise-level tools and support they need in addition to the Eclipse IDE. With the announcement of open-source Java last week, you have to wonder if this approach will be taken by other software vendors across the industry.

-EJB

Posted by Eric Bruno at 11:13 AM  Permalink |

From devices (dust), to mainframes (big iron), Java now belongs to the community under the GPL v2.

Sun has announced that Java SE, ME, and EE are now officially released as open-source projects under the GPL v2 license.

“Everyone has been expecting that one day Sun would open source Java technology, but no one expected just how far they'd go – GPL. A bold move, and a great opportunity both for Sun and for free and open source software, “said Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media.

Here are the details:

Java SE: GPLv2

Sun is releasing three pieces of Java SE: The Java HotSpot™ VM, the Java compiler (javac), and the JavaHelp™ system. You can find the Java SE code at openjdk.dev.java.net. There will be both a NetBeans project (for the Java portions of the Java SE code) and a SunStudio project (for the C++ portions of the Java SE code, such as the JVM) available on java.net to help developers explore the code-base. Developers can download the source code, open it in the NetBeans IDE, and use the Build Project command to build it. For further information and a step-bystep tutorial go to: http://nb-openjdk.netbeans.org. Sun expects to release a build-able JDK in the first quarter of 2007.

Java ME: GPLv2

Available immediately in the Java.net community, is the source code for Sun's feature phone Java ME implementation, the next generation version of the platform that currently enables rich mobile data services in over 1.5 billion handsets. Also available is Sun's source code for the Java ME testing and compatibility kit framework, the foundation for Sun's Java ME compatibility tests. Later this year, Sun will release additional source code including its advanced operation system phone implementation and the framework for the Java Device Test Suite. The advanced OS phone implementation is a CDC-based package that should be available before spring 2007.

As with Java SE, a NetBeans Mobility Pack project will be made available on java.net so that developers can explore the Java ME code-base.

Java EE: GPLv2 or CDDL (You Choose)

Java EE, which was already available under the CDDL, is now also available under GPLv2. Simply choose the license model you would like to adhere to when you download Project Glassfish, Sun’s open-source Java EE implementation. You can find the Java EE code at glassfish.dev.java.net.

“By open sourcing Sun's implementation of Java technology, we will inspire a new phase of developer collaboration and innovation using the NetBeans Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and expect theJava platform to be the foundation infrastructure for next generation Internet, desktop, mobile and enterprise applications,” said Rich Green, executive vice president of Software at Sun. “With the Java development Kit (JDK) released as free software under the GPL, Sun will be working closely with distributors of the GNU/Linux operating system, who will soon be able to include the JDK as part of the open source repositories that are commonly included with GNU/Linux distributions.”

Be sure to check the following for more information:

-The Sun Java open-source site
-The official launch video/audio webcast at 9:30am PT

-EJB

Posted by Eric Bruno at 12:08 AM  Permalink |

Java SE 6 has completed the last stage before full release by passing its final approval ballot.

Java SE 6 has completed the last stage before full release by passing its final approval ballot in the JCP Executive Committee.

Here are all the JSRs that were on the ballot:-

- JSR 199: The Java Compiler API,
- JSR 202: The update to Class the file specification
- JSR 221: JDBC 4.0.
- JSR 223: The Scripting for the Java Platform
- JSR 268: The SmartCard I/O, which is not officially part of the platform, but is available in the JDK.
- JSR 269: The Pluggable Annotation APIs.

And finally...

- JSR 270: The umbrella JSR that combines all of the JSRs in the release

There are, of course, more new JSRs included with Java SE 6, but these were already completed and approved. For more information see Danny Coward’s recent blog entry, and this article on Java SE 6’s new features.

-EJB

Posted by Eric Bruno at 09:12 AM  Permalink |

Is this good will or corporate greed?

Motorola and Apache have announced an effort to build an open-source alternative of Java Mobile Edition (ME), the Java VM used in billions of mobile phones today. The plan is to build a complete Java ME software stack for the mobile industry, and make it available under the Apache 2.0 license.

Although the stated goal is to “reduce Java fragmentation,” my opinion is that this will only fragment the market further. Having multiple implementations of Java, each going in its own direction, and driven by different agendas, can only result in fragmentation to some degree. The real motivation for this move, in my opinion, is corporate greed.

Motorola, and other vendors that embed Java in their products, need to pay Sun a license fee to do so. Sun has every right to charge money; they developed Java; they pour millions into promoting and expanding it; they dedicate resources to improve it; and they support a developer ecosystem (people like you and me). This is how the economy works. The same forces apply to the companies that you and I work for; you build something of value and others pay you for it.

I can only assume that the folks at Sun have expected this, and have planned for this as well. After all, they did announce that Java is moving to an open-source model, including Sun’s existing Java ME stack. What’s interesting is the choice of license. Motorola’s Java ME work, and Apache’s Harmony have both been announced as using the Apache 2.0 license. Sun has made no announcement yet as to what license they will choose. Will it by GPL? LGPL? Apache? Something new? Hopefully we’ll all know by the end of 2006. Stay tuned!

-EJB

Posted by Eric Bruno at 09:19 AM  Permalink |