Apache Harmony has left its ‘incubator’ status. “Apache Harmony is the Java SE project of the Apache Software Foundation. Please help us make this a world class, certified implementation of the Java Platform Standard Edition!”
Apache Harmony has left its ‘incubator’ status. “Apache Harmony is the Java SE project of the Apache Software Foundation. Please help us make this a world class, certified implementation of the Java Platform Standard Edition!”
How harmony is relevant, now that Java is open source? Sure, it won’t harm anyone a different competing implementation, but IIRC the harmony project was started largely because Sun’s java wasn’t open source, and things have changed…
Edited 2006-12-01 16:25
Harmony is under the Apache License.
Sun Java will be under the GPL.
Guess it depends, like everything else, the needs of the person using it.
Will be more interesting once people start benchmarking the two.
Sun Java will be under the GPL.
Will Java be dual licensed then, or is that still to be decided?
Hopefully, Java will be going to GPLv3 eventually, which is supposed to be compatible with Apache’s license…
Perhaps the two will be able to work together when that is done…
“””Hopefully, Java will be going to GPLv3 eventually, which is supposed to be compatible with Apache’s license…”””
I believe the compatibility is like BSD “compatibility”:
Apache Code -> GPLv3 Project
A reciprocal relationship is rarely possible with GPL.
Edited 2006-12-02 01:56
I was thinking the success of Harmony (at least the pace of its development) was one of the reasons for open source Sun JDK.
Unfortunately Sun seems to make progress only after the competition becomes serious. One big example is adding generics only after .Net announced them.
Similar things happened when IBM’s Eclipse become “the Java IDE”. They had to open up Netbeans to compete (albait very late). Now they want to at least maintain “the open source JDK implementation”.
Edited 2006-12-01 16:50
It’s good for the official version anyway.
Because Sun’s version in GPL and Apache’s is well, Apache, Sun can include any improvements in Apache’s version at their leisure.
It will be good to have competing runtime environments, as it has helped the Java Application server market immensely.
> I was thinking the success of Harmony (at least the
> pace of its development) was one of the reasons for
> open source Sun JDK.
Does anybody know if they now rewrote the _entire_ class library (which GNU Classpath with not much success tried to complete the last few years) or just use what GNU Classpath ahs accomplished until now and work together on that?
Edited 2006-12-01 19:01
They are trying to rewrite the _entire_ class library (as in, they aren’t using GNU Classpath because of license incompatibilities).
GNU Classpath is actually pretty close. Not sure about the Harmony though.
Harmony is still trailing Classpath in terms of class library, but it’s catching up fast.
The decision to not use Classpath had nothing to do with license incompatibility of the Classpath license with the Apache license, since there is no such incompatibility: you can freely mix code under both licenses, i.e. you can freely mix GNU Classpath and Apache Harmony if you want to.
While a lot of Apache projects happily use code under the Classpath license (it’s in every gcc compiled build of an Apache binary via libgcc, after all), and also happily use code under the LGPL, at that time Harmony started the ASF had no official policy regarding third party code. Some ASF leaders felt using Classpath would discourage some companies from taking Harmony proprietary, if they wanted to do that. So in order to differentiate itself from the existing efforts around GNU Classpath, Harmony went the “no GPL here in any form!” route, and successfully appealed to donors who wanted to be able to close off the code again easily.
It’s a political decision, rather than a legal one.
I think it was a good decision, since it ensures that IBM and Intel are pouring some nice money into another implementation from the ground up, and more free software doesn’t do harm.
While it’s not based on GNU Classpath, Harmony cannot be considered “write from scratch” either.
They’ve received code contributions (JVM, and class library components) from several vendors (including IBM, Intel, etc).
I’m listing what I’ve found on their pages:
* AWT, Java2D and Swing Code Contribution (Intel)
* DRL Virtual Machine Contribution (Intel)
* Java Security Code Contribution (Intel)
* VM Interface and Core Classes Contribution (IBM)
* “Bootstrap JVM” Contributed to Apache Harmony
* Source for JCVM Contributed to Apache Harmony
Edited 2006-12-01 20:23
Hmmm, interesting how much Intel provided! Especially in light that I’ve never heard of alternative Swing/Java2d/AWT implementation (usually all licensees use Sun one).
Also never heard of DRL VM from Intel. Does anyone know how good it actually is?
It’s the good old ORP (http://orp.sf.net), with a few more years of research work and maintenance.
It’s cool. It’s not as fast as HotSpot, but that’s not the selling point of a research platform anyway: in ORP’s case,that’s modularity of VM components.
Competition! And also the less of a computing monoculture there is, the stronger your entire ecosystem is.
I could understand the need for these projects when Sun controlled Java. But now that they open sourced it, there is no reason to really have two implementations of it is there? Its like having two implementations of Perl. Almost the same, but not quite enough that it won’t cause problems. And if you are a distro maker, why would you want both on the same system, and if you have to pick one, might as well be Sun’s version. Especially people like Red Hat who cater to the enterprise level market where Sun’s Java gets used heavily. Maybe I am wrong though.
i think the GPL’ed versions will naturally move forward, it is just the nature of the developers, most developers really dont like it when someone lifts their code and contributes nothing, this is why people choose the GPL over the BSD. honestly can you imagine where we would be if FOSS meant BSD, no i would support GPL programs anyday, this why sun has to be admired, hmmm yeh the GPL will make Java great.
Will Java be dual licensed then, or is that still to be decided?
Yes, HotSpot will be multi-licensed; all the old licenses are still valid in addition to the GPL.
why put all of this effort into a second-tier effort for a language in decline?
Browser: ELinks/0.11.1-1.2-debian (textmode; Linux 2.6.17-2-686 i686; 91×34-2)
> why put all of this effort into a second-tier effort
> for a language in decline?
Java will now be pre-installed into virtually every open source operating system released from here on. Had Sun been more shrewd this would have been the case five years ago. It might be too late but frankly for cross platform development there is little to touch it.
Language in decline??? You obviously have no idea what you are talking about.