Bangalore Awaits Mik and Ralph

Dilip Thomas the organizer of Eclipse Forum India is ramping up the promotion campaign for the conference. They are doing some billboard and truck advertising in Bangalore and the headline acts include Mik Kersten and Ralph Mueller. Mik and Ralph will be famous before they arrive. Of course there are lots of other ‘world class’ speakers and Eclipse luminaries speaking too.

btw, if you plan on attending, it looks like May 8 is the deadline for early registration.

.org Pavilion at JavaOne

This year at JavaOne there is a .org Pavilion for open source projects.   Simon Phipps has blogged about the details.   It would be great to see some Eclipse based products exhibiting in this Pavilion.   I understand that the space is filling up fast, so if you are interested, I would apply today.

Eclipse Party at JavaOne

We are organizing an Eclipse party at JavaOne, Wednesday, May 9, 7-10pm.   This year we are holding the party at Jillians, near the Moscone.  Last year, the party was a lot of fun, so I am looking forward to seeing everyone again.

If you are interested in attending, please send an e-mail to JavaOneParty@eclipse.org to be added to the guest list.

JavaOne Pavilion Passes

Once again the Eclipse Foundation will have a booth at JavaOne.   As an exhibitor we get a number of ‘free’ pavilion passes that  allow you access to the exhibit area but not the sessions.   If you would like one of these passes, please send an e-mail to Lynn Gayowski  (lynn at eclipse dot org).   We will hand them out on a first come first serve basis.

A Response from Sun

Simon Phipps, Sun’s Open Source Go-To- Guy, was kind enough to respond to my blog post about Sun’s lack of response to the Apache Harmony open letter to Sun regarding their licensing of the JCK. Since his response was buried in the comments of my original post, I thought it would be appropriate to reproduce them here.

Hi Ian I’m back from FISL in Brazil and just saw your blog. This is a matter between Sun and Apache that is very complex and does not benefit from being debated in press soundbites or one-sided open letters - consequently I don’t intend to try. As for Tom Ball’s blog posting, it’s ugly and doesn’t represent an official Sun comment.

If the situation gets addressed, it will be by the continuing quiet discussion between Sun and Apache that’s been going on for ages, and not by a public debate designed for Sun’s usual critics to pile on.

I really appreciate Simon taking the time to respond.  As with anything, there is always two sides to a story, and I am sure Sun has their perspective.   I also understand not wanting to undertake license negotiations in the press or blogs.

However, I do believe Sun needs to make a public statement on their policy for licensing the JCK to other open source implementations of Java.  I think the central question remains ‘Will Sun treat all open source Java implementations, including Sun’s openJDK, equally or will Sun’s openJDK be given special treatment for licensing terms’.

Isn’t it only fair to answer this question in a public forum?

Redmonk Unconference at JavaOne

If you are making plans to attend JavaOne, you might consider attending the Redmonk Unconference on Monday, May 7. James, Stephen and Cote, the Redmonk analyst, are pretty cools guys, with lots of opinions and insight, so it should be a good time. I plan on attending and I look forward to meeting people from the Eclipse and greater open source community. If you want to attend, more details can be found at James blog post.

The Silence from an Open Sun

I am intrigued by Sun’s response, or lack of, to Apache Software Foundation letter regarding the licensing of the JCK. For those that haven’t read the letter, it seems Sun is trying to impose license restrictions, via the JCK license, on Apache that would limit Harmony’s ‘field of use’. According to Apache, these restrictions are in violation of the JSPA agreement and would essentially require Harmony to be issued under a software license that would not be consider open or free. Not a great situation for Harmony.

There are two aspects that intrigued me:

1) How Sun responds to such a public letter in the blogshere, and

2) The impact this situation has on Sun’s strategy to open source Java.

The Response So Far

Sun has a well deserved reputation for being a company that makes effective use of blogs. Starting their CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, it seems everyone in Sun has a blog and a lot of them have some great content. For instance, when the founder of WordPress slammed Sun for their support of start-up companies, Jonathan responded quickly. Not many other large software companies have this high level commitment to blogging. I really do think Sun gets it and knows how to communicate via blogs.

Therefore, I am really surprised to see the lack of response from Sun. I know some people, like Matt, have called for patience but I can find only two posts from Sun employees: 1) from a PR person who to their credit got something out very quickly but the content is basically PR spin, and 2) a passionate, but probably regrettable response, from a Sun technical director, that essentially accuses Apache of extortion. Where is the comment from Jonathan or Simon Phipps, Sun’s goto open source guy, or how about anyone else from Sun?

How open is open?

Sun made the bold move of open sourcing Java and they should be congratulated for doing it. However, I think how they respond to Apache will set the tone for how open Sun plans on being with Java.

A number of people have called on Sun to do the right thing and grant a proper JCK license to Apache. However, if they don’t, I think this raises a number of questions about Sun’s open Java strategy:

1. Why have the ‘field of use’ restrictions been add to this license, when other TCK’s have been licensed to Apache without these restrictions?
2. Is there a plan to impose ‘field of use’ restrictions on all open source implementations of Java, including the ClassPath project?
3. Will the Sun sponsored openJDK also be limited by these restrictions or will OpenJDK receive special consideration?
4. What is the governance model that Sun plans to use for OpenJDK? Does Sun plan to have open governance for OpenJDK or will it continue to be Sun controlled?

I am sure the internal discussions within Sun are pretty intense on this subject and likely a reflection of their non-response. However, when they do respond, I think it will set a clear signal on how open Sun will actually be.

The marketing slogan for the upcoming JavaOne conference is ‘Open Possibilities’. I just hope that is isn’t really ‘Open Possibilities, according to Sun’s rules’.

Eclipse University Offering Virtual EclipseTraining

AvantSoft has started an interesting new portal, called Eclipse University.   The goal is to offer Eclipse training on-line, so you don’t have to travel to a new location.   It sounds like an interesting concept and I’d be interested in people’s experiences with virtual training.  Feel free to leave a comment.

btw, I understand that Avantsoft is offering a discount to employees of Eclipse member companies, so if you register you might want to mention this fact.

Eclipse World Survey & CFS

The folks at BZ Media are getting organized for Eclipse World 2007, November 6-8 in Reston VA. I really enjoyed Eclipse World last year, so I am looking forward to the event this year.

To help them make the event even better, they are requesting some feedback from the community, via an online survey. It is a pretty short survey, less than five minutes, so I’d encourage every to tell BZ Media what you look for in a great conference.

btw, the call for speakers deadline has been extended from today to April 20. If you’d like to present at Eclipse World, this is your chance.

Open Letter to Sun from Apache Harmony

Unlike my rather tongue-and-cheek open letter to Jonathan Schwartz, Geir Magnusson has penned a much more serious open letter about Sun’s restrictions to the JCK.   It will be interesting to see how Sun responds but it certainly seems like Sun is not being fair or open.

When Sun announced they were going to open source Java, they were very quiet on the governance model they would use.   To my knowledge they still haven’t clarified the governance model but it would certainly seem closed right now.  Let’s hope Jonathan does the right thing.