Hi Simon :-)
On May 18, 2005, at 7:54 AM, Simon Phipps wrote:
On May 18, 2005, at 05:33, Danese Cooper wrote:
Much as I admire James, I have to say that the responses from enterprise developers of which he presumably speaks were carefully choreographed by the organizers of JavaONE (who are of course Sun employees).I'm sorry, I respectfully disagree. The answer that Tim got to his question about whether the audience wanted to see Java open source at JavaOne was exactly the answer you would expect from that audience, actually for reasons James regularly explains. No choreography needed. Frankly, the people who organised that debate wouldn't have been able to anyway.
I think you and I are agreeing here essentially (although perhaps not on whether or not an audience willing and able to pay JavaONE entrance fee wouldn't automatically be more vested in status quo :-) ). Not saying this was "machiavellian" but it seems to be at least "malthusian".
Its the old story...you can't ask a question without influencing the answer. When Sun asks they often hear what they want to hear. When Tim O'Reilly asked the same question a month later at OSCON he got the opposite answer (of course).So are you accusing ORM of choreographing the results too? Again, ask a large audience of pro-FOSS people (most of whom are at best ambivalent towards Java) and this is the answer you'd expect.
Not accusing anything...just pointing out the obvious (again, we are in agreement)
I don't believe either of these examples cast any light on the situation. The Java world needs open source JREs because there's a large F/OSS community that will find it hard to engage without them, and we need each other. The Open Source world needs the Java world because without it deployment will be a nightmare for non- hackers - at least until some new-order monopolist creates uniformity. Neither community is likely to embrace the philosophies of the other in the contexts described. It will take bridge- building and expressions of trust.
You know I always tell people to read email generously :-)...bridge- building is exactly what I'm advocating as well (and again, I'm not accusing anyone of anything...please re-read). I'm hoping as you that Harmony can be that bridge through balanced and serious technology focus and clean implementation. It can be a validation of what's good about Java (as a standard).
I spent 6 years at Sun asking the question every chance I got and probably because of who I am I heard clear support for a *compatible* open J2SE...which is what Harmony is trying to be (and why I'm a supporter) :-)...
Likewise, it continues to be my passion, which is why I too am a Harmony supporter, even if I didn't get the chance to put my name to the original list. In particular I support Harmony because for the first time there is the real chance of all parties to the philosophical debate described above to at last meet on an equal footing and build bridges that benefit them all.
I can certainly vouch for your support of Harmony. As I said when leaving Sun...there are several people inside who "get" it and who will continue to build trust with the F/OSS community. My leaving didn't mean that anyone should doubt that there are still open source supporters at Sun. I've been very pleased to see you interviewed positively about Harmony (and of course blogging). Harmony will need all of our support; it is a huge job we are undertaking.
In my experience, James is a fair-minded guy and I believe that a strong, ethical and hard-working Harmony community is bound to impress him over time.
I completely agree with this. I regret that James showed how out of touch he was with real open source practice (crazy answer about put- backs), but my interactions with him (most recently at Cafe Brasil where he also met with Dalibor and Geir) suggest that he's interested in code alone, not in either Sun of FOSS politics, and that positive results will get positive support.
Yup in a nutshell. I'd like to see James keynote at ApacheCon one of these years soon :-)
Danese
Simon
Danese (still speaking on my own and neither on behalf of my former nor my current employer)
On May 17, 2005, at 4:11 PM, Ahmed Saad wrote:
