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HP's E-Speak Source Released to Public
TheFitz writes "Hewlet-Packards new flagship internet product E-Speak has been released open source. The story can be found here on Yahoo or you can get information at E-Speak's homepage. Apparently this is similiar to a Java system in that it's a transparent application API over the HTTP protocol." No weaselly license, either; GPL and LGPL all the way. Cheers for HP!
All they really have left is printers.
Ummm... and measuring equipment (which I'm informed is pretty much the best there is), the components bit (have you seen what they produce using LEDs, for example?) and then there's all the medical stuff too.
HP's got a lot more to it than most people realise, but most of it is not for the general public, so it's not really visible.
The WinCE devices aren't bad for what they are (address book/organiser). I do think they were overpriced, and I also think the Newton was miles better. Too bad that political deals put an end to the Newton.
Don't know about Chai.
With Merced, it seems that HP was not having much joy with the other company concerned, and have now gone back to continuing development on their own processors. The Merced incident has definately put HP behind, but the PA-RISC chips are actually quite good. Too bad the machines cost so much.
As far as it goes with HP giving away E-speak: no company ever just gives something away - they always want some sort of return somewhere. The form that will take may not be directly related; maybe they want to push this as a standard so they can sell add-ons or consulting. Maybe they're doing it to have a detremental effect on a competitor.
-- Steve
Fundamentally HP in releasing e-speak is trying to foster the creation of an open marketplace for electronic services. The web is also an open market, but it was really designed to be a market for mostly free information.
In the e-speak platform you will find the features that we believe will make providing a service on the internet feasible without spending two years and a couple of million dollars rebuilding the necessary infrastructure from scratch. In other words we are trying to remove the barriers to entry for services that the web removed for publishing.
The basic features of the e-speak platform are distribution, language independence (but the most of the current code is in Java), security, manageability, dynamic resource location and intermediation (which allows services to be dynamically configured into composite services).
If that seems a bit too opaque, I'm happy to discuss what each of these means and why they are important to a services infrastructure on the e-speak mailing lists.
-kls (who doesn't officially speak for HP)
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
When you're crushing a man's windpipe with your knee, you can be sure he will attempt to bite you.
It's documented in the AD&D system calls, though it's only valid under Wizard mode.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Since HP released the stuff under the GPL and LGPL licenses, if HP chooses NOT to incorporate bug fixes or contributions from others, anyone is free to take the code and in the much cherished tradition of open source, fork it.
HP is probably trying to cash in on the "open source" phenomenon but not only in the sense of publicity. They need the developers badly if this is going to go anywhere. The fact that they are willing to devote 5+ of their engineers time and commit over US$40,000 to initial e-speak projects on SourcExchange says a lot.
This isn't a case of a PR machine exploiting the words "open source" without the vaguest notion of what it is. It is a company taking tentative steps and testing out a new way of doing business, of achieving things. We should give them our welcome and support.
"We all know that software isn't really a product, but a service - and I think the economy is waking up to that fact."
.....
I only half agree with you on this. The way any company works is that it uses something cheap as input, adds some value to it and puts the result of that out making money over the added value. With software there's the interesting thing that part of the input (existing software) does not have any production cost. That means that when you add value to it and are competing with other companies who deliver a similar product, you can compete with those companies by not charging for the input software.
That's where the GPL comes in. If you look what is GPLed these days it is mostly software that has been around in some form for years. Who pays money for just a C compiler or a yet another mouse driver or an editor? Right nobody, people are paying for IDE's, not for just a compiler (and even IDEs have to offer more than just edit/compile/debug functionality).
This last example also shows that there is one short term tactic of making money over the input software: bundle it with valuable software and keep those things dependent.
MS is the classical example. DOS became a commodity, so they added windows. Word became a commodity, so they bundled it with other apps. Compilers became a commodity, so they created devstudio. All the previous became a commodity so they webenabled it
What happened with HP puzzles me a bit, I spend half an hour staring at the code examples they provided in the tutorial and had to conlude that there was nothing special to be found. Rather it struck me that this was probably the longest version of Hello world I've seen so far.
All the concepts used in e-speak already exists in some form. Worse, as far as I can see they are all available on top of Java (Jini, CORBA, RMI, HTTP). And what they provided also runs on top of Java!?!?
Possibly the innovation is in the protocol they use for the communication but unfortunately that is only documented in the form of source code. I think this is an area where we could use a simple but elegant protocol. Setting up CORBA stuff is a bit overkill for most remote stuff and RMI only works with Java programs and DCOM is to lowlevel.
The fact that they GPLed it only confirms that they did not actually provide much new stuff here. They don't expect to make much money on licensing this software.
Interestingly I see that the new word for 'component' has become 'service'. I think this started when SUN put out Jini, suddenly anything that had an interface and was approachable over the network became a 'service' rather than a reusable component. HP is cleverly using this word now to market their stuff.
As far as I can see they reinvented reusable components and the ORB in a simplified form. I don't expect that this will go anywhere unless they make its use completely transparent. I.e. make it possible to use COM/CORBA/JavaBean components as a e-speak service. With JavaBeans I really don't want to write IDL specs, thats what we have the reflection APIs for (Voyager is an ORB that uses this to automatically hook up any java class to an ORB).
I'm highly sceptical about this, the only interesting part I was able to discover under all the marketing drool was the protocol and there's not much specific about this to be found anywhere but the gpl'd demo code.
Jilles
Well, is this product any good? Does it work well over low bandwidths? etc...
James F.
Hurrah for the GPL! Anyone know if this is the first time a biggie commercial company has decided to use this, rather than inventing their own license?
:-)
Perhaps the Debian Free Software guidelines should be updated to use a sliding scale of freeness, with SCSL somewhere around 0.1, the NPL at 0.6, etc. Then we could spend the next decade or so arguing about whether GPL or BSD is most deserving of the 1.0 spot, and whether it is possible for some to even be more free than that
Benefits of E-Speak
1. E-speak complements device-to-device communication, such as HP's Chai, Sun's Jini and Microsoft®'s UpnP.
2. E-speak leverages key collaborative technology-standardization efforts, such as RosettaNet, ontology.net and Microsoft's BizTalk.
3. E-speak utilizes open technology standards on the Internet, including XML, LDAP, HTTP, WAP, SSL, SLP and SNMP.
Whenever a company puts a product such as this, and opensources it, it means its a good thing. Novell is looking at opensourcing their flagship product, the NDS (Novell Directory Services) I believe that opensourcing products allows designers and programmers to work together on a product that they like/need for the enhancement of that product. Big cheers for HP!
Well, I read the press release, I read the homepage, and I skimmed the (82-page) tutorial, and as far as I can figure out all it is is a Java class library in which they've made it interesting and different by sed -e 's/program/service/g' and sed -e 's/"user interface"/"service contract"/g' or perhaps I missed something...But hey, I agree that it's great they're releasing it under the GPL
--
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
So now, any license thats not GPL or GNU is simply weaselly?
I don't think that that's what Roblimo meant. He was talking about semi-open licences that are a lot less open than they first appear. I can't think of any example off the top of my head, but ISTR that Apple's open licence met with some objections by some people.
Roblimo could have said "GPL and LGPL all the way (though BSD, Artistic, MPL etc etc would all have been okay too)", but it shouldn't be necessary to say that. We shouldn't get upset when a Slashdot staffie forgets to mention our favourite licence/distro/operating system/cola brand.
Please let's not have a licence flame war :-)
-Stephen
The architectural docs do explain all this, though they're not an easy read, and sometimes terminology is a bit strange. (For example, "contracts", as used in the docs, seem a lot like the common meaning of "interface".)
I used to work for HP's Personal Office Computers Division in Sunnyvale, and from my knowledge of their corporate culture, they are FAR closer to RedHat than Redmond. If HP says they're going Open Source on a project, there's a healthy component of sincerity there -- especially in the trenches and on the benches, and when I was there, those people counted for a great deal. I seriously doubt that the spirit of Bill (Hewlett) and Dave has left that place.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
SOAP (and XML-RPC) is cross platform, and is implemented in many languages. It's simple, and runs over HTTP.
It doesn't have a standard service discovery mechanism, though.
It's a pity that just because Microsoft was involved in the RFC's most people on Slashdot are going to hate it.
If MS really does use SOAP for the new verion of DCOM/COM+, then it could be a great for for Linux client software to "leverage existing investments in legecy Windows software" (Tell that to your manager.. they will love it!)
But, hey! If this is a newer version, what the heck! I'm a sucker for upgrading.
Having got that out the way, it's great that HP have gone the path of GPL. Not that there's anything wrong with BSD licences, et al, but Open Source is still very new in industry. If HP can demonstrate a successful release of a commercial package, under the GPL, that would have much more impact than, say, releasing it under the BSD licence. (Why? Because the GPL is close to the extreme end of "Open Source". If a package can do well under it, then anyone else's package can do well under a more "greed-friendly" licence.)
P.S. This is a semi-off-topic note, but I'm seriously pissed off with a number of commercial companies for not wanting to release Linux versions of their packages. This includes Lego, Sierra (makers of MasterCook), etc.
The more successful journeys the big-name, high-profile companies make into the land of Linux and Open Source, the more likely these other companies will take the first step.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It is nice to see HP putting their time, money and marketing muscle behind something open source. Hopefully, theirs will be a positive experience for all, rather than scaring a lot of developers/companies away.
The companies that are actively supporting open source all have one thing in common - they are primarily getting there revenue from hardware, or software consulting - not sales of software. We all know that software isn't really a product, but a service - and I think the economy is waking up to that fact.
Open source helps companies like HP because they get wide distribution of their software - not because they get free developers! Wide distribution of software means it's easier to find bugs. Finding bugs makes better software. The developers are a bonus, but people shouldn't feel exploited.
I did some work for Intel, and they have a LOT of software engineers - why? To find ways to make programs that use their processors. The code isn't important, it's that they sell more hardware.
Open source goes one futher, because when the source code is out there, the program will never become obsolete - hint, engineers a dirt cheap compared to the revenues places like HP and IBM bring in. The only obstacle is not having the code. Remember the PC DemoScene? If all those groups released the code for their effects, then we'd still see evolution of their demos - but none/few of them did. (See the hornet archive before it goes away!)
Companies like Sun haven't completely figured this out yet, I don't think. IBM and HP sure have. We'll see more from them in the future - they are very "with it". If all goes will with my courses this term I'll be accepting an offer with IBM for this very reason - the push for linux and open source in general.
Kudos!
..don't panic
HP has been in Microsoft's back pocket for years. They have tried their best to help Microsoft keep their hegemonic hold on the industry by doing everything in their power to undermine Sun's vision of Java. They are members of all working groups, in concert with Microsoft, that are at odds with Sun. They released a clean room version of Java that did not adhere to Sun's standards. They insist this was done because they had problems with Sun's licensing. Hogwash. They were acting on orders from Bill.
HP is not a friend of Open Source. They represent the coming wave of cynical, manipulative corporate entities that wil try to present themselves in a friendlier light. HP has had a dismal financial year and is trying to right its boat. I, for one, will not support them in any of their endeavors.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
I've played with e-speak some (we're supposed to be one of those e-commerce consultant companies), and though it is still vey much "Beta" software, I think it has a lot of potential. Going first with an open standard and now with open source, it has the promise of becoming one of those fundamental standards like NFS was after Sun released the source code to that.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
From a very, very cursory perusal of the site, I get the following impression of what this thing actually is.
From the look of it, its a way for programs to invoke RPC's from hosts they don't know exist. That is:
Suppose My coffee maker wants to know the time, and its sitting on a network in my Home Of The Future® It can query the local e-speak server server (e-speak core???) for a service with the appropriate properties (must have TimeZone=>GMT, must have Precision=>microsecond, must have Name=>Time, etc), and then follow it up with a call to the *right* server's services. shazam.
This could be really cool, not just for coffee (which is pretty neat to start with) but for the ultra-thin cell phone-futurerama devices everyone is so keen on ushering into reality. And cool or not, it could be very popular with the "Now I don't have to worry about the license at all 'cuz I'm not distributing the software at all just the service' crowd.
There might come a day when open services are the name of the game- when we not only have to see that software has source shipped with distributions, but that Completely Documented Service API's are published (And the only way to do that, really, is expose the source). It would really bite to have to get a Micro$oft coffe maker to get the most out of my Micro$oft Microwave, which I got because it was the only kind that could use the Micro$oft clock-radio correctly... We may be compelled to establish our own network of services on this second chapter of the internet that HP is so cheery about (and hey, I can't say I'm not, it'll be an excuse to buy a pilot...). An open source service negotiation protocol is a great start, but from the look of things, it may be uphill from here.
Its the Ideology(tm)!
Now that it's free (as in "freedom"), I think it has the potential to really take off.
Your Servant, B. Baggins