Apache Harmony Moves To Apache Attic

think_nix writes "After the resignation of Apache from the Java SE/EE Executive Committee, the time has now come for Harmony to be added to the Apache Attic. Harmony was 'the project to produce an open source cleanroom implementation of Java.' An open vote was taken within the Project Management Committee, which resulted in a 20-2 majority to discontinue development."

Comments

Re:Harmony what now?

[sitkill]

uh, not sure if you even read the original article but..

There IS an open implementation of java, the openJDK, which is why this is being shut down (IBM who was the main contributor to Harmony has moved it's resources to openJDK).

But I guess it's more in line with slashdots javahate if we ignore those facts.

Re:Harmony what now?

[sourcerror]

Universities wouldn't switch for a non-typed language as a main platform. C++/Java will continue to be entreched, with a little C# sprinkled on. Also they don't follow flavor of the month.

By the way they embraced Java before it was opensourced, so I don't think they'll make a boycott about Oracle dicking around with its software patents.

Re:Harmony what now?

[sitkill]

lol, well I did actually bring my helmet and my gloves to work since I bike...

WAIT A MINUTE IS THIS MY BOSS!?

Re:Harmony what now?

[sa666_666]

Except cross-platform compatibility, and not being controlled by a proprietary vendor.

OpenJDK?

[bigsexyjoe]

I'm not completely up to speed on these issues. But is there anything about OpenJDK that people are unhappy with? Is it not open enough in some manner?

Re:OpenJDK?

[Jonner]

It seems that IBM started Harmony to produce a complete, permissively licensed implementation of the Java specifications, while OpenJDK is Copyleft. A year ago, IBM shifted their support to OpenJDK, so there's no longer a major sponsor for Harmony. That, in addition to the fact that Apache is no longer participating in the Java Community Process seems to be the reason there's little development going on in Harmony.

The reason that Apache resigned from the Java Community Process Executive Committee is that the Java specifications are completely controlled by Oracle, which doesn't allow their compliance test tools to be used freely. Harmony will remain in a similar relationship with Java that Mono has to DotNet rather than being a first class implementation. The significant difference between Java and DotNet seems to be that Sun/Oracle have released most (all?) of the official implementation as Free Software, but the specifications that software implement are still proprietary.

The main beneficiary of Harmony seems to be Google, which is using some code from the project as part of Android, though Android was never intended to be a complete Java implementation. They've made it clear that they want to use only permissively-licensed code so that they can release it as proprietary software whenever they want. That's exactly what they did with Android 3. While I'm glad IBM is now supporting a Copyleft implementation rather than a permissively-licensed implementation, a mature programming language system needs alternative implementations to keep the spec-writers honest. Oracle's handling of the specification process continues to prevent Java's use as a completely open system.

Re:OpenJDK?

[Chibi Merrow]

Does that mean that Oracle is actually suing Google to be more open in their implementation rather than shut it down?

No, that's not it at all. It has nothing to do with openness and everything to do with ensuring that there can never be a JVM that competes with the one Oracle bought from Sun.

Do we know why they won't open source the compliance tools? Does that effectively prevent other implementations of Java from existing? Do we know why Oracle wants that?

Yes, yes, and yes. Your second question is the answer to the first. As far as your third question... Oracle doesn't want competing Java implementations because they don't want to compete with another Java implementation. There's nothing deeper to it than that.

The sad part of all this is Sun was a pretty lackluster steward of Java (too unwilling to break backwards compatibility with bytecode written in 1996 to fix problems in the language), but Oracle has been downright harmful to Java since taking it over. For their first major JVM release, they punted all the important features for Java 7 to a later release and then shipped with a (known) bug that broke loops.
Let me repeat that again:

THEY. BROKE. LOOPS.

A world where Oracle has the only legal implementation of Java is a world where Java is on its way to being a dead language.

Unfortunately for my shop, its not like we can rewrite millions of lines of code as C#, either, as Mono has a whole different patent minefield...

Glad I'm the 'C++' guy and I'm learning Flex. :)

Re:Harmony what now?

[SiMac]

I'm talking out of my ass here, but I was under the understanding that OpenJDK (or at least IcedTea) has the same field of use restrictions as any other Java implementation, which come from Sun's patent licensing, and can't be avoided by building a clean room implementation.

Re:Harmony what now?

[h4rr4r]

So C# magically gets you around the patent minefield?

How does that work?

Re:Harmony what now?

[Lulu of the Lotus-Ea]

Aaaghh!

Python is, of course, a STRONGLY typed language (not untyped). It is also DYNAMICALLY typed rather than STATICALLY. But these issues are orthogonal, and languages exist in every quadrant of the type system grid implied.

Re:Harmony what now?

[Zephiris]

There is definitely no Microsoft version of .NET for Mac.

Re:Harmony what now?

[binarylarry]

That's because no one has been remotely successful with Mono.

If Android was built using parts of Mono instead of Apache Harmony, all the handset makers would be sued by Microsoft on two fronts.

Re:Harmony what now?

[_Shad0w_]

I believe it's also because Mono was largely developed by Novell, who had a licensing agreement with Microsoft. I think Microsoft also saw Mono as a way of proliferating support for Silverlight outside of the Windows platform, so were fairly accepting of it anyway. Although Silverlight seem to be fairly dead - I don't think I've really sites outside of Microsoft's using it and even they seem to have stopped.