Monday, May 09, 2005
To hell with the JDK really!
First of all a big congratulations to the Apache team for dreaming up one of the most fantastic pieces of cinematic ideas ever imagined.
The Apache team is going on a journey “Where no one has ever gone before” and aims to create a “Compatible, independent implementation of J2SE 5 under the Apache License v2”.
WOW! This is George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry rolled into one huge block buster. I can't wait for Christmas or Durga Pujo for that matter.
It is not that people have not tried to re invent the JVM/JDK wheel. The open source landscape is strewn with failures such as GCJ and Classpath, which are currently being used by all but a large group of 3 students in the University of Timbuktu!
How many more commercially irrelevant JVMs do you want?
IMO it will be almost impossible to re create or re write a vast and quite complicated API like Java. You see the JDK is just not java.util.* and java.lang.*, but contains a whole lot of stuff like Swing, AWT, Naming, Java 2D, JDBC and of course a state of the art Garbage Collection mechanism in it's JVM.
I suggest an alternate to the Apache team.
In fact, if I were running the Apache Foundation today, I would rather have the best people within the group build the next generation Rich Internet Web Application architecture and a new Apache Web Server to support this architecture. In other words do exactly what Microsoft is doing Smart Clients and Macromedia(Oops Adomedia) is doing with Flex. To hell with the JDK really!
The Apache team is going on a journey “Where no one has ever gone before” and aims to create a “Compatible, independent implementation of J2SE 5 under the Apache License v2”.
WOW! This is George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry rolled into one huge block buster. I can't wait for Christmas or Durga Pujo for that matter.
It is not that people have not tried to re invent the JVM/JDK wheel. The open source landscape is strewn with failures such as GCJ and Classpath, which are currently being used by all but a large group of 3 students in the University of Timbuktu!
How many more commercially irrelevant JVMs do you want?
IMO it will be almost impossible to re create or re write a vast and quite complicated API like Java. You see the JDK is just not java.util.* and java.lang.*, but contains a whole lot of stuff like Swing, AWT, Naming, Java 2D, JDBC and of course a state of the art Garbage Collection mechanism in it's JVM.
I suggest an alternate to the Apache team.
- Do not re-write the entire JDK. If you want, you could for instance just re-write the java.io.* package, bundle it in a jar archive and let people drop this into their lib/endorsed directory. This would ensure that users get a better implementation if IO, but do not have to deal with a crappy implementation of Swing. All JVMs support this modular architecture as of today, where by if I wanted to replace a JVM supplied class with my own implementation (same package name), I can just drop into an endorsed directory and JVM class loaders would pick this up.
- Give users the option of native compilation instead of the currently prevailing Just In Time native compilation, if that is what they require. The Excelisor JET JVM with its Ahead of Time compilation could be a good guide towards that end.
In fact, if I were running the Apache Foundation today, I would rather have the best people within the group build the next generation Rich Internet Web Application architecture and a new Apache Web Server to support this architecture. In other words do exactly what Microsoft is doing Smart Clients and Macromedia(Oops Adomedia) is doing with Flex. To hell with the JDK really!
Comments:
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Neel,
You can do it if you like. You can even do it at the ASF =) Remember, the ASF is *not* a top-down, directed organization. It is a bunch of volunteers working together on what they think is important.
If you think that a rich (web) client platform is needed, and the ASF is a good place to build it, then by all means, come propose it!
-Brian McCallister
You can do it if you like. You can even do it at the ASF =) Remember, the ASF is *not* a top-down, directed organization. It is a bunch of volunteers working together on what they think is important.
If you think that a rich (web) client platform is needed, and the ASF is a good place to build it, then by all means, come propose it!
-Brian McCallister
# posted by 
: 2:59 AM
: 2:59 AM
If you're interested in an open source (CPL) rich client platform that leverages the Flash player, please check out OpenLaszlo, available in its third release at:
http://www.openlaszlo.org/
Laszlo is in some ways similar to Flex, though it would probably be fairer to say that Flex is similar to Laszlo. :-)
You may also want to check out IBM's Eclipse-based IDE4Laszlo, available on alphaWorks at:
http://alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/ide4laszlo
No further editorializing from me -- I'm the CTO/founder of Laszlo Systems.
- David Temkin
http://www.laszlosystems.com/
http://davidtemkin.com/
http://www.openlaszlo.org/
Laszlo is in some ways similar to Flex, though it would probably be fairer to say that Flex is similar to Laszlo. :-)
You may also want to check out IBM's Eclipse-based IDE4Laszlo, available on alphaWorks at:
http://alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/ide4laszlo
No further editorializing from me -- I'm the CTO/founder of Laszlo Systems.
- David Temkin
http://www.laszlosystems.com/
http://davidtemkin.com/
# posted by : 10:48 PM
: 10:48 PM
So what is the point of an open-source JVM? If it is for research purposes or for fun then fair enough. See IBM's Jikes™ Research Virtual Machine (RVM), which is an open source pure java jvm.
http://jikesrvm.sourceforge.net/
If they expect commercial organisations to use it over the JVMs available from Sun, IBM or BEA, then I'm not convinced. Backing of the major players is important for company bosses.
As you point out, you can override classes using the endorsed libraries feature and if a bug is fixed through this framework then it can be submitted to Sun etc for inclusion in the main libraries.
Hmmm!!!!
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http://jikesrvm.sourceforge.net/
If they expect commercial organisations to use it over the JVMs available from Sun, IBM or BEA, then I'm not convinced. Backing of the major players is important for company bosses.
As you point out, you can override classes using the endorsed libraries feature and if a bug is fixed through this framework then it can be submitted to Sun etc for inclusion in the main libraries.
Hmmm!!!!
# posted by : 10:00 PM
: 10:00 PM 
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