Interoperable P2P: Jxta

Troy writes: "This article went up today (on developerWorks) about the Open Source project called Jxta, which is a community-run attempt to build a utility application substrate for peer-to-peer applications. Anything with an electronic heartbeat can become a Jxta peer." A nice high-level overview of how Jxta is supposed to work.

Comments

Making the same mistakes all over again

[Carnage4Life]

The problem I have with distributed computing technologies from Sun and the other Unix companies is that they are typically never fully standardized by vendors. CORBA suffered from the fact that the spec was too generic and yet to complex and thus didn't enforce that ORBs should provide enough default services which lead to all sorts of interesting vendor lock in as its almost impossible to find two ORBs that implement the same exact set of services.

Although J2EE decided to go a different route by specifying a comprehensive list of minimum requirements it is sizable enough that no two vendors currently completely implement all of the same functionality (or at least not the last time I checked).

Jxta seems to be taking the generic-ness route which from experience leads to incompatible implementations and vendor lock-in. Particularly telling where the following excerpts from the article

In other words, a Jxta application that meets the minimum specified interoperable requirements superficially and does not interoperate in any meaningful way with others can still be in accord with the Jxta specification. However, it is anticipated that the viral growth of P2P applications and services will force vendors to embrace interoperability as a key product feature. The consequences of this design decision are left to be tested by the trials and tribulations of open market forces.

Sounds like a journey that is starting with the wrong step to me.

Re:Sun's "Community Process" ain't

[Nelson Minar]

Whatever you may think of the Sun Community Process, JXTA isn't part of it. JXTA is released under an Apache-like license, and the community is organized more or less like Apache projects.

I've been participating in JXTA since the beginning and have been impressed that Sun has truly made JXTA open source. With all the good and bad that entails.

Re:Jxta vs. Freenet

[trix_e]

Freenet seems to be *much* more about anonymous and safe dissemination of information without the fear of censorship or forgery. While it *can* be used as a general P2P service layer, it's not exactly designed to be the pipes under any old P2P app.

Jxta, on the other hand is shooting to be just that, a general services layer.

Big difference. Both may flourish but for different reasons. (IMHO Freenet is a very specific demonstration of a concept, but won't take off as anything much more than that...)

Re:Useful or redundant?

[trix_e]

it's not just about file sharing! That's a common P2P myth and misconception. File systems and sharing are about the least of where P2P becomes useful. That can be a component, but the distribution of resources across a heterogeneous network, and the ability to free an application from a central authority are much more interesting side-effects of P2P architectures.

In any event, building some sort of framework can be useful. If you take this logic and extrapolate it, there was really no reason to advance at all... once there is a critical mass of need for a given set of functionality, it's useful to build a abstracted service to provide it...

Jxta is not all that

[hardburn]

Jxta was created by Sun to be a "framework" for P2P networks. What exactly that means is rather vague. It appears to make basic development decisions that are better left up to indiviual projects (such as broadcast seaches). TCP/IP is really the only thing most P2P networks have in common, and even that could often be easily replaced with a diffrent underlieing protocol if it was necessary.

There are several other assumptions that Jxta makes that it shouldn't. See this article for more information.