Marketing Harmony [was Re: [general] compatibility packages]

[Stefano Mazzocchi <st...@apache.org>]

Dalibor Topic wrote:

>> 'Harmony - runs fewer apps than the leading brand' is hardly a
>> compelling tag line.
> 
> 'Harmony - runs 100% of apps Sun does (sure it's obviously a rubbish claim, 
> but you should trust us anyway on our other claims)' is not a very 
> compelling tag line either.
> 
> The 100% like Sun tag line has shown time over time to be false for IBM's 
> VM for example, since IBM does not ship some of the classes Sun does, so 
> vm-specific code using them fails in funny ways on it.
> 
> But that's how it is, 100% maching semantics is practially only possible by 
> using the exact same sources. And we're deliberately not doing that, and 
> making our own decisions on quirks of the spec.
> 
> Harmony is *always* going to run fewer apps than the leading brand,
> unless it uses the exact same set of sources, no matter what sort of
> outlandish marketing claims we chose to use as tag lines.

Let me try to be creative for a second, marketing wise.

If we enter a pissing contest with Sun over who runs more apps, we lose.
This is not what it's all about.

Look at HTTPD, they never had to claim that they were faster or more
secure or more useful than other web servers, they "just" needed to do
follow the protocols precisely and work under all circumstances and all
kinds of attack and respond quickly to vulnerabilities and to feature
requests.

Just like HTTPD, we can't change the "protocol", but we can talk to
those who do, channeling ours and our users' feedback.

Just like HTTPD, we don't win if we are faster, or if we have better
marketing brochures... we win if we can make our users happy.

Harmony's first goal is to pass certification to be able to enter the
ball park (being legally admitted to play, that is).

But the real game is to run the apps that our users care for.

What a slogan? Gump on Harmony runs *exactly* like Gump on Sun's JDK...
and at comparable speeds. And guess what? it's open source: if you can
make it even faster, hook it up to your favorite profiler/debugger, or
whatever you feel you need to implement that won't ruin compatibility
with the spec, we'll love to incorporate your patches.

It might take a while before "user innovation" really starts to kick in,
after that, but sure enough, we'll have our "tab browsing"-like or
"apache module"-like user-suggested feature that Sun's VM won't have but
will still allow us to pass certification.

And *then* is when the real fun begins.

-- 
Stefano.


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Re: Marketing Harmony [was Re: [general] compatibility packages]

[Dalibor Topic <ro...@kaffe.org>]

On Sat, Aug 12, 2006 at 08:19:33PM -0400, Martin Cordova wrote:
> I think that Stefano points to the right direction. To be more
> specific, Harmony will gain market share if it can run the most
> popular java applications, mostly open source (tomcat, resin, jetty,
> eclipse, hsql, mckoi, etc), and providing an efficient implementation
> of the basic libraries.
> 
> To add an additional factor, in some countries like Venezuela,
> governments started a policy about adopting free/open software (in the
> GNU sense) for all its activities, whenever/wherever possible. In the
> particular case of Venezuela, it has been very aggressive, affecting
> the way of doing IT business with the public sector, and there was a
> lobby group that has put strong pressure trying to forbid the usage of
> Java as a technology based on the false statement that this is
> propietary technology, not compatible with the principles of free and
> open source software.

Yeah, I've been aware of that.

> 
> There has been a lot of discussion and lobby around the subject, and
> of course the subject of the forthcomming great Harmony JVM has been
> at the center of the debate. I was told that even the Kaffe people
> visited Venezuela and shared some time with the Ministry of Science
> and Technology, explaining the current state of free Java - I cannot
> confirm this. 

Interesting. I recall seeing slides about setting up Kaffe+Tomcat from
Venezuela, but don't know who from us Kaffe folks went there. If you
have more information on the usage of Kaffe in Venezuela, please send it
my way. Thanks for bringing this up!

cheers,
dalibor topic

> My company has invested some resources on this
> public-relations too, protecting our current and future position, as
> well as our investment on our Java framework
> 
> To make the long story short, all we need here is a free JVM + JIT
> that can run popular server-side webapps and Eclipse, and if possible
> as fast as the IBM JVM does ;) -- leaving other interpreted options as
> perl, php and ruby eating the dust...
> 
> Please Harmony commandos, hurry up!
> just joking :)
> 
> Regards,
> Martin
> 
> 
> On 8/12/06, Stefano Mazzocchi <st...@apache.org> wrote:
> >Dalibor Topic wrote:
> >
> >>> 'Harmony - runs fewer apps than the leading brand' is hardly a
> >>> compelling tag line.
> >>
> >> 'Harmony - runs 100% of apps Sun does (sure it's obviously a rubbish 
> >claim,
> >> but you should trust us anyway on our other claims)' is not a very
> >> compelling tag line either.
> >>
> >> The 100% like Sun tag line has shown time over time to be false for IBM's
> >> VM for example, since IBM does not ship some of the classes Sun does, so
> >> vm-specific code using them fails in funny ways on it.
> >>
> >> But that's how it is, 100% maching semantics is practially only possible 
> >by
> >> using the exact same sources. And we're deliberately not doing that, and
> >> making our own decisions on quirks of the spec.
> >>
> >> Harmony is *always* going to run fewer apps than the leading brand,
> >> unless it uses the exact same set of sources, no matter what sort of
> >> outlandish marketing claims we chose to use as tag lines.
> >
> >Let me try to be creative for a second, marketing wise.
> >
> >If we enter a pissing contest with Sun over who runs more apps, we lose.
> >This is not what it's all about.
> >
> >Look at HTTPD, they never had to claim that they were faster or more
> >secure or more useful than other web servers, they "just" needed to do
> >follow the protocols precisely and work under all circumstances and all
> >kinds of attack and respond quickly to vulnerabilities and to feature
> >requests.
> >
> >Just like HTTPD, we can't change the "protocol", but we can talk to
> >those who do, channeling ours and our users' feedback.
> >
> >Just like HTTPD, we don't win if we are faster, or if we have better
> >marketing brochures... we win if we can make our users happy.
> >
> >Harmony's first goal is to pass certification to be able to enter the
> >ball park (being legally admitted to play, that is).
> >
> >But the real game is to run the apps that our users care for.
> >
> >What a slogan? Gump on Harmony runs *exactly* like Gump on Sun's JDK...
> >and at comparable speeds. And guess what? it's open source: if you can
> >make it even faster, hook it up to your favorite profiler/debugger, or
> >whatever you feel you need to implement that won't ruin compatibility
> >with the spec, we'll love to incorporate your patches.
> >
> >It might take a while before "user innovation" really starts to kick in,
> >after that, but sure enough, we'll have our "tab browsing"-like or
> >"apache module"-like user-suggested feature that Sun's VM won't have but
> >will still allow us to pass certification.
> >
> >And *then* is when the real fun begins.
> >
> >--
> >Stefano.
> >
> >
> >---------------------------------------------------------------------
> >Terms of use : http://incubator.apache.org/harmony/mailing.html
> >To unsubscribe, e-mail: harmony-dev-unsubscribe@incubator.apache.org
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> >
> >
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dinamica - RADical J2EE framework
> open source, easy and powerful
> http://www.martincordova.com
> 
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Re: Marketing Harmony [was Re: [general] compatibility packages]

[Geir Magnusson Jr <ge...@pobox.com>]

Martin Cordova wrote:
> To make the long story short, all we need here is a free JVM + JIT
> that can run popular server-side webapps and Eclipse, and if possible
> as fast as the IBM JVM does ;) -- leaving other interpreted options as
> perl, php and ruby eating the dust...

+1

> Please Harmony commandos, hurry up!
> just joking :)

We're hurrying!  And if you want to help, please do!  We need it.

geir


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Re: Marketing Harmony [was Re: [general] compatibility packages]

[Martin Cordova <ma...@gmail.com>]

I think that Stefano points to the right direction. To be more
specific, Harmony will gain market share if it can run the most
popular java applications, mostly open source (tomcat, resin, jetty,
eclipse, hsql, mckoi, etc), and providing an efficient implementation
of the basic libraries.

To add an additional factor, in some countries like Venezuela,
governments started a policy about adopting free/open software (in the
GNU sense) for all its activities, whenever/wherever possible. In the
particular case of Venezuela, it has been very aggressive, affecting
the way of doing IT business with the public sector, and there was a
lobby group that has put strong pressure trying to forbid the usage of
Java as a technology based on the false statement that this is
propietary technology, not compatible with the principles of free and
open source software.

There has been a lot of discussion and lobby around the subject, and
of course the subject of the forthcomming great Harmony JVM has been
at the center of the debate. I was told that even the Kaffe people
visited Venezuela and shared some time with the Ministry of Science
and Technology, explaining the current state of free Java - I cannot
confirm this. My company has invested some resources on this
public-relations too, protecting our current and future position, as
well as our investment on our Java framework

To make the long story short, all we need here is a free JVM + JIT
that can run popular server-side webapps and Eclipse, and if possible
as fast as the IBM JVM does ;) -- leaving other interpreted options as
perl, php and ruby eating the dust...

Please Harmony commandos, hurry up!
just joking :)

Regards,
Martin


On 8/12/06, Stefano Mazzocchi <st...@apache.org> wrote:
> Dalibor Topic wrote:
>
> >> 'Harmony - runs fewer apps than the leading brand' is hardly a
> >> compelling tag line.
> >
> > 'Harmony - runs 100% of apps Sun does (sure it's obviously a rubbish claim,
> > but you should trust us anyway on our other claims)' is not a very
> > compelling tag line either.
> >
> > The 100% like Sun tag line has shown time over time to be false for IBM's
> > VM for example, since IBM does not ship some of the classes Sun does, so
> > vm-specific code using them fails in funny ways on it.
> >
> > But that's how it is, 100% maching semantics is practially only possible by
> > using the exact same sources. And we're deliberately not doing that, and
> > making our own decisions on quirks of the spec.
> >
> > Harmony is *always* going to run fewer apps than the leading brand,
> > unless it uses the exact same set of sources, no matter what sort of
> > outlandish marketing claims we chose to use as tag lines.
>
> Let me try to be creative for a second, marketing wise.
>
> If we enter a pissing contest with Sun over who runs more apps, we lose.
> This is not what it's all about.
>
> Look at HTTPD, they never had to claim that they were faster or more
> secure or more useful than other web servers, they "just" needed to do
> follow the protocols precisely and work under all circumstances and all
> kinds of attack and respond quickly to vulnerabilities and to feature
> requests.
>
> Just like HTTPD, we can't change the "protocol", but we can talk to
> those who do, channeling ours and our users' feedback.
>
> Just like HTTPD, we don't win if we are faster, or if we have better
> marketing brochures... we win if we can make our users happy.
>
> Harmony's first goal is to pass certification to be able to enter the
> ball park (being legally admitted to play, that is).
>
> But the real game is to run the apps that our users care for.
>
> What a slogan? Gump on Harmony runs *exactly* like Gump on Sun's JDK...
> and at comparable speeds. And guess what? it's open source: if you can
> make it even faster, hook it up to your favorite profiler/debugger, or
> whatever you feel you need to implement that won't ruin compatibility
> with the spec, we'll love to incorporate your patches.
>
> It might take a while before "user innovation" really starts to kick in,
> after that, but sure enough, we'll have our "tab browsing"-like or
> "apache module"-like user-suggested feature that Sun's VM won't have but
> will still allow us to pass certification.
>
> And *then* is when the real fun begins.
>
> --
> Stefano.
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Terms of use : http://incubator.apache.org/harmony/mailing.html
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: harmony-dev-unsubscribe@incubator.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: harmony-dev-help@incubator.apache.org
>
>


-- 
Dinamica - RADical J2EE framework
open source, easy and powerful
http://www.martincordova.com

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