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This section:

Blog postings by Operational Dynamics partners and staff

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Sun, 26 Nov 2006

First live demonstration of the new java-gnome bindings

I’m giving my second talk at foss.in this afternoon, Sunday, at 14:00 local. This time it’s a technical one:

Opening GTK to Java programmers: the past, present, and future of the java-gnome bindings project

(Click through if you care to see the abstract for the talk)

I’ve been working like mad for about 6 months to completely re-engineer the design of the java-gnome language bindings to GTK and GNOME. Memory management, proxying GObjects into Java, figuring out how to handle more generic GValues in property setting. But most importantly, how to create an architecture where we could generate the bulk of the bindings off of .defs metadata so we can share that with the pyGTK guys and make our bindings a comprehensive representation of GTK and GNOME without being the totally borked, hand written, leaky, and completely unmaintainable mess that the present java-gnome 2.x bindings are.

Along the way I’ve been validating the design with code not just code mock ups but a fully working prototype. The most challenging technical piece of late has been designing an new signal handling API. Not only was the API design tough, but the plumbing to make it work is completely voodoo — the GSignal marshaling APIs are not trivial. Couldn’t have got anywhere without the old 2.x code to use for inspiration, but man oh man it’s been a hard slog.

On Wednesday at 01:48, I finished the last piece of engineering to enable signal connection to work! And so, today, as I’m talking about architecture and working across boundaries between projects, I’m going to be unveiling the prototype and giving the new java-gnome 4.0 code its first live demonstration.

This is only the beginning. There’s a lot of work yet to come, and I am hopeful that we’ll get the funding we need to make it a reality. Java Libre!

I was talking about all this yesterday over coffee with one of my good friends Sirtaj Singh Kang, who happens to be one of the original KDE developers. After the whole discussion he said “did you know I wrote the old KDE Java bindings? They’re really rickety, and I want to redo them. Do you think I could use this too?”

Wow! Wouldn’t that be something?

Don’t worry. Cats and dogs are not sleeping together: I gather there is already some new Qt Java code floating around, so presumably whoever did that will be extending it to KDE, but no matter. The architecture I’ve developed seems really promising for the task of proxying any underlying native library which more or less follows OO idioms. So as I’m working, I’m keeping in mind that more than just GLib based systems might someday want to use it. Obviously, though, our new code is going to be optimized for the GNOME + GTK case, which is as it should be.

AfC

Thu, 23 Nov 2006

Keynote Abstract

I’m giving a talk at foss.in tomorrow, Friday, at 6pm:

I realize that this is only of interest to people in Bangalore this week and reading planet.foss.in, but here’s my abstract:

There is a fundamental structural problem in the open source movement. Within a given project, things generally find a way to get done, but when a problem lies between two projects (be they peers, one dependent on the other, whatever) then things often remain unresolved…. This is actually the cutting edge area in the free software movement at the moment - trying to find a common ground for not just projects but constellations of projects and above them distros to collaborate.

Whilst contribution is the barrier to entry (ie, my talk last year), there is a bigger issue: the overall continued viability and success of the open source movement. And that will take us finding ways to cross the bridges between projects.

The question has a number of aspects. Although any problem involving humans interacting is ultimately a social one, we are nevertheless face a situation where our tools are holding us back. But don’t worry: in the grand tradition of free software gurus, I shall not let so-called “reality” get in my way as I describe the future Utopia that awaits us.

Why there are there 80,000 unfinished one man show projects on SourceForge? The “not-invented-here” syndrome means that so many of us keep re-inventing the wheel; and that’s so often because we think its easier for us to start work on something new than to contribute to an existing project. We all know there are lots of reasons for this, but a big part of the truth is that contributing is hard. That’s what we have to change.

So this talk will look at what getting in the way of projects co-operating with each other, and take a wild romp through the amazing and vibrant activity taking place in the area of tools to support us. The present state of affairs is not encouraging: there is a proliferation of incompatible project hosting and bug tracking systems. Inefficient communications mediums that help us to rant at each other but don’t help us to reach decisions. The contentious struggle to develop a next generation source revision control system rages on. Even the hallowed release cycle of GNOME is up for examination: is it developing quality software or preventing people from easily contributing?

The times, they are a changing, however. Of particular interest is the version control debate. Working closely with the proponents of a number of the latest entries in distributed version control land, I’m going to talk about why this has been such a ripe area of activity, but focus on something that one of the bzr developers just noted to me: “We spend so much time chasing the Distributed Version Control System grail because that’s what everyone thinks we should be doing - but it’s not clear whether that’s actually the problem that needs addressing: when someone approaches me and says ‘but I just want to share my branch’ are we really helping them?”

Source code is just part of the equation; another huge factor is getting that code to build. The solution here has long been automake + configure + Make + libtool but the they way they approach the problem has long been primitive. There has been some dramatically new developments lately in this area focused on helping code from different projects work together. It’s going to take all of us to get it to succeed, but if we can cross the divide, then we will have made a major step towards working together.

Last year I said the barrier to entry is contribution. This year we are going to talk about the criterion for success: ensuring that the barrier to other people contributing to your project is low. If we can remove the impediments to collaboration then together we can really make free and open source software the road that into the future. Apotheosis rising.

I hope you can make it!

AfC

Mon, 13 Nov 2006

Taking Java out for a spin

Not four hours after Sun released Java under the GPL + Classpath Exception, Edwin Steiner, one of the hackers on the Cacao Java VM, gave the HotSpot VM a spin and posted some analysis.

He notes that he did hit one stumbling block:

“Building is very easy, but I found out that the disassembler does not seem to be supplied.”

But check this out:

“So I quickly hacked in the cacao disassembler, and it works! :)”

Awesome! And the cool part is, as Mark Wielaard observed, since both are GPL, the disassembler hack is just fine to distribute.

Freedom to do your own thing. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the freedom in Software Libre.

AfC

Encumbrance of the class libraries?

Well it’s official. Sun is releasing Java under the GPL + Exception, just like Classpath is licenced!

The initial release includes the HotSpot VM, their Java compiler, and a few other tidbits. And get this: even the image of Duke, the Java mascot, has been released under an Open Source licence! These people really get it!

The reference implementation of the libraries aren’t out yet, though, so naturally what everyone wants to know is what the encumbrance situation is with the various classes in that library. Based on comments from various Sun people in #open-source-java on OFTC (and they’ve promised a full list shortly), it would seem the only major problems are in the areas of colour, font rasterization and graphics rasterization.

These were characterized as fairly major issues; it was funny to see the Classpath community respond with a unanimous “not for long they won’t be!”

Java Libre!

AfC

Towards the Armistice

“At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month, one minute of silence will be observed to mark the signing of the Armistice and to remember all those who fell in the cause of their nations.”

Each year on Remembrance Day, I recall two things.

At Fountain’s Abbey in North Yorkshire, England, there is a stately manor, but no one lives there any more. The two children of the house, a son and a daughter, were both killed in battle during World War II.

Neither had reached their 20th birthday.

There is a beautiful stained glass window memorial in the entrance way which reads:

They gave of their tomorrow so you could live your today.

The second is a poem that seems to say what a veteran needs to say:

If you are able
save for them a place
inside of you
and save one backward glance
when you are leaving
for the places they can no longer go
Be not ashamed to say
you loved them,
though you may
or may not have always.
Take what they have left
and what they have taught you
with their dying
and keep it with your own
And in that time
when men decide and feel safe
to call the war insane
take one moment to embrace
those gentle heroes
you left behind.

Major Michael Davis O’Donnell
1 January 1970
Dak To, Vietnam

— at the closing of Hamburger Hill

In the service of peace and freedom. Amen.

AfC
11:00 hrs
11 November 2006

Wed, 08 Nov 2006

Trial Balloons

Well it’s all over the net now. Sun just might actually release Java under the GPL.

Before we get all excited, I would observe that this article, from Doctor Dobb’s Journal (ordinarily quite a respected publication) cites “several industry sources”. That’s not exactly a convincing reference. And even if it is hard news, my guess is that this is just an official trial balloon to see what industry reaction will be. Fair enough.

Now that I’ve been sufficiently pessimistic, listen to this:

The company is very close to announcing that it will put the mobile (ME) and standard (SE) editions of the Java platform into the GNU General Public License (GPL), with the Java Enterprise Edition and GlassFish reference implementation to follow

They then quote a developer as saying “I think Sun realizes that their other pseudo-open source efforts don’t work” — which is very true. Community reaction to CDDL has always been weak. It’s just too bloody complicated.

The article goes on to say:

Offering Java only under the GPL would have a cataclysmic effect on the software industry, forcing Java platform developers to freely release their contributions if they continue developing around the platform’s GPL code. … A more likely scenario is that Sun would offer dual licensing for Java

According to a Sun executive … dual-licensing is the plan. Sun will have open-source and commercial licenses, differentiated by their IP indemnifications

Awesome.

I noted in an article about Open Source Java a few months ago that Sun had indeed made it quite clear that this time they were listening and that they had made a real effort to get connected with the Free Java community. So if this is a trial balloon, then everyone who cares about software freedom needs to express their support and to continue encouraging Sun to choose this course. And if this is for real, then wow, and congratulations to Sun!

AfC

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