What's the mood in the trenches?

[Karl Trygve Kalleberg <ka...@gentoo.org>]

Hello harmonizers,

I see from the announcement that the bigwigs of the most popular
free/open-source Java infrastructure projects have signed (Tromey,
Topic, Wielaard in particular), so there is certainly at least a token
interest in the Grand Unification of things.

However, from looking at the Kaffe IRC and mailing list, the Classpath
mailing list and a few other related places, there's not been much a
discussion about this project there yet.


Do any of you instigators have a feel for how motivated the core
contributors of your respective projects are about this harmonization?


I know from previous packaging experience, that there are *a lot* of
competing free/open-source JVMs out there, and many have been created
solely to scratch the itch of one person or a small group.

Grand Scale Itch-scratching, however, seems to be a difficult skill to
master, just as unifying the many small kingdoms in Europe (and
elsewhere) proved difficult (and bloody) in the medieval times.

I'd like nothing more than for this project to succeed. Geir-Arthur and
his round table[] of trusty fellows deserves the best of luck. I promise
to test whatever you produce and package the stable stuff:)


Cheers,

-- Karl T

Re: What's the mood in the trenches?

[Mark Wielaard <ma...@klomp.org>]

Hi,

On Sun, 2005-05-08 at 12:41 +0200, Karl Trygve Kalleberg wrote:
> I see from the announcement that the bigwigs of the most popular
> free/open-source Java infrastructure projects have signed (Tromey,
> Topic, Wielaard in particular), so there is certainly at least a token
> interest in the Grand Unification of things.

No kidding. Tom, Dalibor and I worked really hard on the unification of
GNU Classpath, kaffe and gcj over the last couple of years. We would
feel left out if we weren't part of the next Grand Unification!

> However, from looking at the Kaffe IRC and mailing list, the Classpath
> mailing list and a few other related places, there's not been much a
> discussion about this project there yet.

Sorry. I was mostly off-line during the weekend. I did just now send a
little note about it to the GNU Classpath list since people pointed out
how Miguel de Icaza was interpreting it.

> Do any of you instigators have a feel for how motivated the core
> contributors of your respective projects are about this harmonization?

In general I believe everybody wants to see the (perceived)
incompatability and hostility between the GNU and Apache communities
gone. So on a high level there is agreement that harmonization is a good
thing.

On this particular announcement and FAQ however there has been a lot of
fear, uncertainty and doubt. In particular the start of the proposal was
really badly perceived by all the hackers involved in projects around
GNU Classpath:

> there are many ongoing efforts to produce solutions (Kaffe, Classpath,
> etc).  There are also efforts that provide alternative approaches to
> execution of Java bytecode (GCJ and IKVM).  All of these efforts
> provide a diversity of solutions, which is healthy, but barriers exist
> which prevent these efforts from reaching a greater potential.

We need a good explanation of this statement. And I don't have one.  The
GNU Classpath "ecosystem" has been working on unification and harmony
for a long time and everybody seems to agree we are doing a pretty good
job. That makes people angry that we volunteered to take part in this
harmony effort.

You can view a couple of reactions on http://planet.classpath.org/

I'll try to do some damage-control and spread a bit of good spin around
this project by pointing out how the GNU Classpath hackers can help the
harmony community make decissions on the social and technical issues
they are facing.

> I'd like nothing more than for this project to succeed. Geir-Arthur and
> his round table[] of trusty fellows deserves the best of luck. I promise
> to test whatever you produce and package the stable stuff:)

Please tell us what you have packaged so far, what it works for already,
what makes it difficult to package, what kind of improvements you want
to see, etc.

Cheers,

Mark

-- 
Escape the Java Trap with GNU Classpath!
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html

Join the community at http://planet.classpath.org/