Oracle looks for love at Java DevJam

Draft of OpenJDK bylaws draws mocking laughter ...

By Damon Hart-Davis, 20th February 2011

FOSDEM 2011 The Java* track at FOSDEM 2011 started off on the right foot by dealing with the state of the OpenJDK head on – both politically and technically – with a talk from Oracle's Mark Reinhold. There were quite a few speakers at Java DevJam and lots of Java tech over the two days, but this talk was needed to start to clear the air, hindsight suggests.

Oracle has not had pleasant press on its "soft skills" recently, for example in its handling of OpenSolaris, OpenOffice, Hudson and the major festering issues and stagnation in the JDK such as with Apache/Harmony and TCK licences. There were some small signs in the last few days that maybe Oracle realises how unnecessarily clumsy it has been.

But while Oracle may not care greatly for better or worse about the first three, the Java ball is too valuable to them to fumble. Indeed, Oracle confirms that keeping Java at the top is its highest priority – out of pure self-interest, not least because Oracle has 20,000 employees working in Java. Making indirect and direct revenue from Java is further down the priorities list.

In all these projects inherited from Sun there were (arguably) boils that needed to be lanced. Sun might have been able to manage these issues better if it had actually been profitable and a software-driven company rather than hardware-centric.

Ghosts of Java past and present

Attending Java Sans Frontières were key Java participants past – including Simon Phipps, ex-Chief Open Source Officer at Sun Microsystems – and Java participants present. The current Java crew included Mark Reinhold, chief architect of the Java Platform Group at Oracle, who gave the "State of the OpenJDK" talk itself, plus RedHat and Azul Systems – which "delivers elastic deployment platforms for Java applications" – and many more in the room. And although generally cordial, the mood was a little tense because Oracle still has a minefield to negotiate to get the community back on its side and win back its trust.

For example, a draft of the OpenJDK governing board bylaws and its initial membership produced snorts of derision from the audience. This was partly because of its effective 80 per cent Oracle/IBM representation, and partly because of the absence of key community and competing commercial organisations, such as RedHat and Azul.

No one claims that the bylaws are complete, nor that the membership is set in stone (the board could quickly vote to co-opt outside members) but this is one area that is likely to remain a touchstone, and it seems that Oracle intends to pay much more than lip-service to it, which is good.

Ticklish TCK issues

The issues around the TCK licences were also discussed pragmatically, and it is clear that this was, and will remain, a commercially sensitive area; it is one of the few fairly direct revenue pinchpoints for Java. As Sun demonstrated, being warm and cuddly is not enough to foster Java – commercial realities have to be be met too – but accommodating competitors is doubly tricky.

Technical and procedural aspects were also discussed, including the release timetable and the relationships between the open and closed versions of JDK 6 and 7; the continued use of GPLv2 with the Classpath exception; and a commitment to do development "in the open". The closed parts of JDK 7 only amount to 2 per cent of the codebase, and the proprietary JDK7 releases will be in step with OpenJDK 7, which should reduce confusion all round – in security/patching issues for a start.

"General availability" of JDK 7 is currently set for 28 July, well overdue for the nominal 18-month major release cycle brought to a grinding halt by the TCK spat with Apache, at least in part. And it shouldn't be too long after that before I'll have official JDK 7 on my Mac too – a relief for me (and Java/Oracle people toting Mac laptops)!

I came away from the talk fairly happy that Oracle is trying to DoTheRightThing^TM with Java and not lose the community goodwill that has been so hard-earned, and the JCP is going to be the primary technical forum for advancing Java.

Download a copy of the 2011 OpenJDK Community Bylaws Draft on Mark Reinhold's blog here, see an analysis of the draft on gnu_Andrew's FOSS blog here and on Java DevJam here. ®

Devnote

*Disclosure: Java is my preferred programming environment for many development areas, since while not perfect nor the be-all-and-end-all of languages, I find it very productive – and the cross-platform aspects work for me every day. I'm also a (fairly inactive) personal member of the JCP.

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COMMENTS

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All Reader Comments (7)

Highly Rated

Posted Monday 21st February 2011 09:58 GMT

Rex Alfie Lee

Agree with first two posters...

Oracle made its position very clear, bottom line, screw the rest. As one poster mentioned psychopathic behavior. Oracle needs to be removed completely from the OpenJDK to give Java some good news. At present I would think there would be a large move away from Java on the basis of Oracle's behaviour...

Posted Monday 21st February 2011 05:42 GMT

wanderson

Oracle and Java

It seems that article writer Damon Hart-Davis is more concerned about getting latest Java VM for his personal Mac that in-depth reporting on the status of Oracle allowing certification of the Apache Harmony, and pre-maturely concludes that Oracle will "do the right thing" by RedHat, Azul, Apache and everyone else, even while the company closes off prior business arrangements.

How naive and stupid can a tech writer be, when he has witnessed the calamitous moves by Oracle in several areas of technology management, including reneging on official declarations of technology agreements.

These technology journals need to get better qualified, more sensible and intelligent reporters.

W. Anderson

wanderson@kimalcorp.org

Posted Monday 21st February 2011 19:49 GMT

Bruno Girin

Java in the real world

Having been to FOSDEM, at some of the same Java talks as Damon, I can more or less confirm his account of things. To understand it, you have to remember that the world is very rarely black and white, as the Daily-Mail-esque headlines of some of the tech press would want you to think, but is generally shades of grey.

Yes the atmosphere at FOSDEM was a bit tense but most attendees were grown up and were ready to hear what Oracle had to say before pillorying them. And Oracle did the right thing in addressing the problems head on and then concentrating on the technical aspect of things. So the impression I got is that the technical people at Oracle are trying to do the right thing for the Java language and the community (which is not the same thing) while having to navigate carefully around the controversy generated by the accountants and lawyers.

Do I agree with the way Oracle as a corporation has managed Java since acquiring it? No but I understand the situation their techies are in, having been in similar situations myself where what is good from an accountant's point of view is anathema from a technical point of view.

Do I agree with Damon that Oracle understand they have been clumsy and can't afford to drop the ball on Java any further? Yes, you just have to look at their Fusion middleware portfolio: if they fuck up Java, they fuck up a large revenue stream. And this is why I am reasonably optimistic about Java and why I think Oracle will try to do the right thing in the end: they can't afford not to.

The point Damon is trying to make about Java on his Mac is simply that from JDK 7 onwards, the Mac OS-X implementation will be delivered by Oracle rather than Apple and should follow shortly after the Windows, Linux and Solaris implementations.

Last but not least, the areas where Java could be easily replaced by another language are mobile and desktop (JME, JSE), which is a tiny fraction of the install base and not where Oracle traditionally makes money. Java EE is a completely different kettle of fish, not because of the language but because of the API and platform that goes with it and this is also where Oracle makes money. In order to support their business, they need the JEE platform to keep being successful and in order to do that they need JSE and Java as a language to keep being successful. And to be honest, every single company I've dealt with recently that has a significant investment in JEE has no intention of reducing it, rather the opposite.