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Sun's Phipps Slams App Engine's Java Support
narramissic writes "Sun Microsystems' chief open source officer, Simon Phipps, said in an April 11 blog post that Google committed a major transgression by only including support for a subset of Java classes in its App Engine development platform. 'Whether you agree with Sun policing it or not, Java compatibility has served us all very well for over a decade,' Phipps wrote. 'That includes being sure as a developer that all core classes are present on all platforms. Creating subsets of the core classes in the Java platform was forbidden for a really good reason, and it's wanton and irresponsible to casually flaunt the rules.' Phipps characterized his remarks as non-official, saying: 'This isn't something I could comment on on Sun's behalf. My personal comments come purely from my long association with Java topics.'"
Seems to me they should put their money where their mouth is...
Sun *DID* put their money where their mouth is. They developed java, then GPL'd it. They bought StarOffice, the GPL'd it.
Google, on the other hand, is an advertising company that is trying to get lock-in, same as Microsoft did with their proprietary java extensions long long ago ...
I think Sun is jealous, they have been pushing grid computing for ages and it's been a flop for them. Google is most likely going succeed here, especially with a "good enough" solution which no doubt pisses of Sun/Sun employees (who have a tendency to go for the engineering "ideal" solution which often results in a very nice and extremely pricey product). Witness the container computing stuff, Sun is making a big deal about seismic tests, and Google is quietly deploying hundreds of these things in their data centers. Sun seismic test vs. Google data center tour. I bet for most of us Google's Java AppEngine implementation will be "good enough".
As someone who personally loves the Java platform, I honestly think he's making a mountain out of a molehill. As far as I've been able to tell so far, the Google App Engine supports the Java platform in its entirety, with a few caveats. Those caveats deal with the services Google offers (e.g. no JDBC accessible database) and the sandbox the apps run in (e.g. no network support, no filesystem).
AFAICT, there's nothing stopping me from, say, writing a JDBC access layer for their Data Store. Which means that Google is keeping with the spirit of the platform, and that this is mostly just a misunderstanding.
If you want real problems, try running Java apps on a shared hosting provider sometime. The limitations of those sites will have you shouting praise for what Google is offering.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
CLDC, the bastardized, stripped version of Java the Sun blessed and which is still the standard on many phones broke the whole "run anywhere" paradigm.
Still causes us major problems since Sun still supports and condones it despite the fact that almost all systems now could easily support a real Java version.
Yeah, this is garbage. Watch the "campfire" videos, a boringly large part of the presentations is given over to how you are not locked in, because AppEngine exposes the standard Java servlet container and database access APIs even though it's based on BigTable which is not a standard database. They show how the guestbook app can be taken right across to run on WebSphere with no code changes. The design of Java on AppEngine is pretty much the opposite of lockin - they've clearly put a lot of effort into ensuring a very, very different underlying system can export the standard Java APIs.
As to why it's a subset, I guess the same logic as applied to the Python implementation which is also a subset - due to the way it works the classes need to be audited for security problems. Some of the Java APIs contain native code which probably has to be rewritten or at least very carefully audited to ensure you can't break out of the sandbox. And some I guess just aren't that useful. But I don't really know the reason.
It's not the restrictions, it's the implementation. Normally, existing Java code could just be compiled on the embedded system, and compiler errors would specifically identify security reasons for specific classes/methods/etc being disabled. Google removed the classes entirely, so the developer will just get IDontKnowWTFThatClassIs exceptions instead, which are less informative.
It also contravenes existing standards, sort of like making "dangerous" files invisible to unprivileged users in *NIX (via some sort of arcane black magic, perhaps a modified (munged) shell or something...) instead of just setting appropriate file permissions.
$ make available