The Google Web Toolkit SDK (GWT SDK for short) is based on a number of mainstay opensource tools for Java and Javascript development, such as Mozilla Rhino, Eclipse SWT and Apache Tomcat, and it’s licensing scheme is a mixed bag of the opensource and the proprietary, typical of the Google Way: the GWT Java class libraries and third party software are distributed under open source licenses (Apache License v. 2.0, Mozilla Public License v. 1.1 and Eclipse CPL v. 1.0) , while the GWT Java-to-JavaScript compiler and hosted web browser are shipped binary-only and subject to a complicated “terms and conditions” scheme. Excerpt:

Except for distributions for internal business and/or personal use to your employees or contractors in compliance with these Terms and Conditions, you may not distribute Google Web Toolkit Development Tools or any services or software associated with or derived from them, or modify, copy, license, or create derivative works from Google Web Toolkit Development Tools, unless you obtain Google’s written permission in advance.[..]

Once you have obtained Google’s permission, you may make copies of Google Web Toolkit Development Tools and distribute such copies to others provided that any such recipient has had an opportunity to review and agree to be bound by these Terms and Conditions. If others to whom you’d like to distribute Google Web Toolkit Development Tools do not have this opportunity to review and agree to these Terms and Conditions but you would still like to distribute copies to them, you may do so provided that you have the legal right to bind each of those third parties to these Terms and Conditions. If you do not have this right and the recipients do not have an opportunity to review and agree to these Terms and Conditions, you may not distribute Google Web Toolkit Development Tools to them.[..]

You agree not to (and agree not to allow third parties to) modify, adapt, translate, prepare derivative works from, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble or otherwise attempt to derive source code from the Google Web Toolkit Development Tools, or to extract significant portions of Google Web Toolkit Development Tools files for use in other applications.

How it works is, you write your front end in Java and the GWT compiler converts your Java classes to browser-compliant JavaScript and HTML. There’s a binary bundle for Windows and a tarball for Linux, both containing some fairly sparse class reference documentation and several example apps, as well as a getting started guide (featuring instructions for using GWT with Eclipse; joy!).

Google had previously made available two key components of Google Maps, it’s most celebrated Ajax app: an XSLT library to render XML in the browser and the Google Maps API, a web service that allows programs to extract map data. Google Maps mashups have since been making a killing with both the mobile / GIS geek culture and the cool web crowd. However, the GWT SDK release looks like a more serious attempt at cornering developer mindshare in an emerging defacto standard than earlier Google Code offerings. Ajax frameworks and toolkits have been sprouting left and right for more than a year now (even Eclipse.org has jumped on the bandwagon with it’s recent announcement of the ATF project), but Google’s SDK can still claim a dominant position in the market; judging from the company’s impeccable timing in announcing previous projects, the right time to unveil an “opensource-friendly” Ajax framework is probably now. Ruby on Rails, the other hotter-than-lava buzzword on the web development market today (Danny O’Brien: “first they ignore you, then you win”) typically also implements Ajax.

Of course, Deus ex Google or not, the hard underlying realities of GUI programming still apply. Weiqi Gao muses:

Oh the buzz. Oh the excitement. Oh the AJaX Gods has released their secret sauce with an Apache license.[..]

Now that developing an AJaX application is really the same thing as developing a GUI application, I want to draw your attention to what Eric Burke said 776 days ago:

GUI Programming is Hard: Let me qualify what I said in the first paragraph. Creating a bad GUI is really, really easy. Creating a “good” GUI is really, really hard.

Personally, I think that the coming convergence of development paradigms is a Good Thing (beside the need for fundamental diversity in the software ecosystem), but that remains to be seen.

Update (20/5, 21:30): ZDnet’s resident blogger, David Berlind draws an interesting parallel between GWT and a new skunkworks project by Sun:

Sun turns Javascript into Java. Google turns Java into Javascript.

Phobos is about how developers that work in languages other than Java will be able to program a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) with those non-Java languages.[..] in the big picture, Phobos, which is about scripting server side Java with Javascript is very much about the company’s willingness to move to more of a dynamic language model [..] So, whereas Sun’s Phobos allows developers to run the Java platform with Javascript, Google’s Web TookKit allows developers to run the Javascript platform with Java.  What were Google’s motivations?  Not too different from Sun’s.  In supporting Javascript on the server side, Sun saw the convenience of giving developers programmable access to both ends of the pipe with one language. Plus, giving Javascript and AJAX programmers access to the Java Runtime Environment is a way of exposing the functionality of the JRE to a new class of programmers.

As a side effect, people will now probably tend to confuse Java with Javascript even more than they did before.

References:

• AJAX Progress and Challenges (ITConversations panel, 1/3/06)
• Hacking Maps with the Google Maps API (XML.com, 10/8/05)
• Will AJAX help Google clean up? (CNet, 17/3/05)
• HOW-TO: Make your own annotated multimedia Google map (Engadget, 8/3/05)
• Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications (Adaptive Path, 18/2/05) — the article that started it all
• script.aculo.us, Dojo, Rico, Prototype: more opensource Ajax goodness
• OpenAjax blog
• AjaxPatterns
• Cool Google Maps
• Google Maps Mania
• My del.icio.us links on Ajax

Tags: AJAX+Google, AJAX, Google

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Ένα χρόνο μετά την κατοχύρωση του oneiros.gr, αποφάσισα επιτέλους να αξιοποιήσω το ρημάδι το domain (αυτό θα πει “τα ζώα μου αργά”!). Μην ψάχνετε να βρείτε τίποτα στη ρίζα, ακόμα· εν αρχή ην το blog, και βλέπουμε για τα υπόλοιπα (σιβιά, papers, λίστες αγαπημένων, καβατζοκατάλογοι κλπ.).

Το Non – Linear Complexity μετακόμισε, βέβαια, μαζί με όλα τα συμπράγκαλα από το παρελθόν (βλέπε αρχεία), και το γνωστό και μη εξαιρετέο ” Όλα Μπλε” ^(TM) οπτικό θέμα, μεταλλ-αγμένο και σε ακόμα πιό ανοιχτές αποχρώσεις, για πιό ευχάριστη ανάγνωση (ελπίζω). Το θέμα φτιάχτηκε κυρίως για Mozilla browsers αλλά, άνευ απροόπτου, θα πρέπει να εμφανίζεται καλά και σε όσους άλλους σέβονται τα web standards, όπως η Opera. Το σίγουρο είναι ότι δεν πρόκειται ν’ ασχοληθώ άλλο με τον κατακαημένο Internet Explorer 5 και τα υποδέλοιπα απολιθώματα του πολέμου των browsers: όσοι τα διαθέτετε ακόμα, ξεφορτωθείτε τα όσο είναι καιρός. Εκτός του ότι είναι ανασφαλή, το διαδίκτυο εξελίσσεται και η ζωή συνεχίζεται.

Το καλό για σας, με τη μετακόμιση αυτή, είναι ότι το Non – Linear Complexity συστεγάζεται πλέον με το blog του Τάσου Μπασούκου, δημιουργού του blogentis, πράγμα που σημαίνει ότι θα μπορείτε να χρησιμοποιείτε όλες τις καινοτομίες της τελευταίας έκδοσης στα σχόλια, όπως για παράδειγμα τον φανταστρουμφικό rich text editor, που υποστηρίζει εισαγωγή περιορισμένων στοιχείων HTML με το ποντίκι, και την πολυαναμενόμενη αυτόματη αλλαγή γραμμής (επιτέλους!). Το καλό για μένα, μεταξύ άλλων, είναι ότι δε θα χρειάζεται πλέον να γράφω τη μορφοποίηση με το χέρι, πράγμα που σημαίνει:

• περισσότερα κείμενα (χρόνου επιτρέποντος)
• περισσότερη μορφοποίηση
• περισσότεροι σύνδεσμοι!

Επίσης, θα μπορώ επιτέλους, σαν άνθρωπος κι εγώ, να βάζω το σωστό χαρακτήρα (·) για την πολυαγαπημένη μου άνω τελεία στα κείμενά μου!

Οι όποιες παρατηρήσεις για την ευχρηστία του blogentis και την αισθητικη του theme είναι παραπάνω από ευπρόσδεκτες, γιατί ως γνωστόν λάθη είμαστε και ανθρώπους κάνουμε. Πάντως, για όσους φίλους σιχάθηκαν τα βασικά χρώματα και σχήματα του blog: μην περιμένετε να τα αλλάξω σύντομα, I know what I like (κοινώς, ας κοπιάσει το CSS3 και βλέπουμε…)

Τέλος, για όσους ενδιαφέρονται να πειραματιστούν με το blogentis, έχει κυλήσει αρκετό νερό στο αυλάκι από τότε που διατίθονταν μόνο ως πηγαίος κώδικας από το CVS του Sourceforge. Σε λίγο καιρό, ευελπιστώ πως ο Τάσος θα κάνει ευρέως διαθέσιμο ένα binary bundle (γνωστό και ως war-άκι), και πως θα βρω το χρόνο για να τον βοηθήσω να ολοκληρώσει την τεκμηρίωση ώστε να γίνεται ευκολότερη η εγκατάσταση και από χρήστες που δεν είναι γκουρού της Java. Όποιος ενδιαφέρεται να βοηθήσει στην ανάπτυξη, στο debugging και στη δημιουργία θεμάτων του blogentis, μπορεί όπως πάντα να επικοινωνεί με τον Τάσο ή μ’ εμένα.

Καλώς σας ξαναβρήκα!

Ανανέωση (3/3 5:49): Και για να μη ξεχνιόμαστε, τα του Καίσαρος… το banner βασίστηκε σε μιά φωτογραφία του καλού μου φίλου MiDWaN. Φυσικά, στο τελικό αποτέλεσμα είναι σχεδόν αδύνατο να αναγνωρίσει κανείς το ..Θερμαϊκό, αλλά αυτή είναι η μαγεία της πόλης μας: η ομορφιά βρίσκεται κρυμμένη παντού, όπως θα διαπιστώσετε κι από άλλες φωτογραφίες (1, 2, 3) του MiDWaN με θέμα τη Θεσσαλονίκη.

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Opinions about the Harmony proposal among execs and pundits vary, but developers will almost certainly consider it a Good Thing.

If accepted, Harmony will become a “Podling“, under the care of the Apache Incubator PMC. Magnusson was also involved in mentoring the recently incubated Apache Geronimo J2EE server project, and is currently the mentor of the Agila lightweight Business Process Management engine, donated by Gluecode to the Apache Foundation. IBM’s earlier major move in conjunction with Java was in August 2004, when the company donated 500.000 lines of code from it’s proprietary Cloudscape relational database to the Apache Derby project, which is still in incubation. As part of it’s acquisition of Gluecode, IBM pledged “a major commitment to Apache Geronimo as the Open Source application server of the future”, to be backed up with the offer of contributors and code to the project’s community.

Interestingly, the Harmony FAQ hints at IBM offering SWT to the project, leading one to wonder whether these developments were orchestrated; certainly, this would be a huge boon to an Open Source implementation of Java, as SWT is steadily gaining converts from Swing, but also from other native UI toolkits, and is already on offer under an Open Source license. As for licensing the new J2SE with the Sun TCK, the FAQ mentions that Apache will apply to Sun for a scholarship as a qualified non-profit (Apache-SSL author Ben Laurie and concurrency guru Doug Lea are currently on the review board), but I suspect IBM will also be on hand to offer assistance should it be required.

Although pressure on Sun to opensource Java will probably be lessened now, it will be interesting to see how the company reacts to the mounting wave of good karma IBM and Apache are amassing on enterprise Open Source Java. Sun’s president recently criticised the GPL as an instrument of American economic imperialism, but relations between Sun and the Apache Foundation have mostly been cordial, and no such accusations have been levelled against the Apache Software License.

Update (20:37): As expected, Slashdot is bristling with speculation. It’s sort of a connect-the-dots game, but some interesting tidbits surface from time to time (eg. 1, 2, 3, 4).

Update (16/3): Sun’s Tim Bray, Simon Phipps and Graham Hamilton have given the project their blessing, as Slashdot dupe (duplicate news item) notes. Magnusson: “Apache Harmony has nothing to do with Gluecode. Gluecode focuses on Java application servers. It has nothing to do with J2SE implementations, and has no interest in J2SE implementations.”

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• “Mustang” Java more Open?
• JBuilder Eclipsed?
• CodeZoo launched, SpikeSource blooms
• Το γκαμπί της Γαλάζιας Κυρίας
• Και το όνομα αυτού: Blogentis
• Apache hierarchy
• Νέα βιβλία: Spidering Hacks, Hardcore Java
• Open Source web tools written in Java
• Ultimate framework or ultimate buzzword trap?
• Mars Rover Java-based web interface

The meek announcement of Mustang’s proposed new desktop features reads almost like a garage project’s roadmap:

Note that we are attempting to be as open and honest as possible here; we are telling you the things that we would like to do in Mustang; it is entirely possible that some of these items may not make it into the release for one reason or another. Mustang is, after all, very much mid-development right now. Also, any API additions or other enhancements to the J2SE platform specification are subject to review and approval by the JSR 270 Expert Group. But beyond these caveats, this list should contain, at any given time, the features that we are currently hoping to deliver in Mustang.

It seems the company is earnestly eliciting outside developer cooperation and opting for openness of development, this time around, but copyright ownership issues might scuttle the plan in it’s inception. ZDNet quotes Sun VP Graham Hamilton:

To submit their own code, programmers will have to transfer copyright ownership to Sun[..]. The bigger barriers will be cultural[..]: outside programmers convincing Sun programmers that their code is up to snuff; and Sun programmers helping outside programmers learn the ropes of the Java code quality review processes.

Although community goodwill to help in improving the weaknesses of the Java Platform has been mounting in recent years, I can’t see many Open Source, and especially Free Software programmers, forfeiting the sustainability of their contributions within the community, in the slim hope that Java might one day become truly Open Source.

Companies, organizations, and even some individuals, have routinely collaborated with Sun for years towards the development of Java API’s, under the auspices of the much maligned Java Community Process, but real political power afforded to even some Open Source groups involved has led to positive revisions of the process, as well as the introduction of the Java Specification Participation Agreement. It is doubtful, however, that the mass of Open Source talent Sun would like to harness towards refurbishing the Java Platform could navigate their way around such convoluted procedures, or even want to participate in a process where they, as individuals, would have no political power.

Perhaps this could be made to work if proxy parties would consent to represent coders, but the copyright transfer issue outright bars participation from, for instance, the GNU Foundation. This, of course, sheds new light to the recent attack on the GPL by Sun’s president, Jonathan Schwartz, who alleged that Free Software’s mainstay license imposes on it’s users a “predatory obligation to disgorge all their IP back to the wealthiest nation in the world” (that is, the United States, where the GPL originated).

The new licensing scheme, which is slated to replace the ageing and unwholesome SCSL, introduces it’s own fair share of complications as well. According to Infoworld’s Paul Krill:

Key to the company’s licensing plan is Project Peabody, which introduces a new scheme called a JIUL (Java Internal Use License), pronounced “jewel.” Under JIUL, users can change Java source code for their internal use only. JIUL is based on an honor system in which Sun expects compatibility to the J2SE specification but relies on users to ensure that compatibility. Use of Java under JIUL is free.[..]Also being unveiled on Wednesday as part of Peabody is the JDL (Java Distribution License), a narrowly focused license for developing full-scale commercial deployments of Java on different operating systems.

Sun previously has created the JRL (Java Research License) as part of the Peabody effort. Intended for the research community, it allows for sharing of binary-based research distributions of Java. The company has been releasing source code for J2SE under the JRL.

James Gosling’s spin on the new licensing scheme:

We’re trying to respect needs of both sides, to create a licensing and collaboration atmosphere that’s as close to open source as possible while not violating the expectations of the rest of the world around interoperability and compatibility.

Although a onetime moderate supporter of the idea of opensourcing Java, it’s inventor and Sun’s developer products CTO has grown increasingly grumpy in recent months towards the notion and it’s advocates. To be fair, he had to put up with quite a lot of inane flak on the subject. But to be also honest, the above statement reads like a massaged sales pitch, and is quite unbecoming of his mega-geek status and freespirited nature.

Where Open Source is concerned, Sun is slowly getting it. To it’s credit, the company has managed to grow out of the fear of Microsoft’s “embrace and extend” stratagem, which governed it’s every move, in respect with Java; it even managed to seemingly shuffle off IBM’s constant overtures (some would say harassment). However, time is not on it’s side, as a host of new and flexible languages, let alone Microsoft’s .NET, are slicing away at it’s developer mindshare. Having given the world the most extensible and portable object-oriented language, Sun must at some point own up to the fact that the bulk of Java’s popularity stems from community and corporate efforts.

As Timothy Prickett Morgan of ITJungle points out:

It is ironic that having just taken the real jewel of Sun open source–the Solaris operating system–to the open source community as OpenSolaris, Sun can’t seem to do the same thing for Java. Sun makes money on Solaris, but only has influence through Java.

I really hope that Mustang will roam freer than Tiger, and prove to be a healthier animal altogether, with the help of new developer mindshare and “horsepower”. Perhaps it’s a good omen to start naming the next versions after birds, in the hope that someday, Java will really take flight to the Open skies.

Άλλα άρθρα σχετικά με το θέμα

• Harmonising Java
• JBuilder Eclipsed?
• CodeZoo launched, SpikeSource blooms
• Το γκαμπί της Γαλάζιας Κυρίας
• Και το όνομα αυτού: Blogentis
• Apache hierarchy
• Νέα βιβλία: Spidering Hacks, Hardcore Java
• Open Source web tools written in Java
• Ultimate framework or ultimate buzzword trap?
• Mars Rover Java-based web interface

Borland is a founding member of the Eclipse Foundation and had recently announced that it would be joining it’s Board of Directors as a Strategic Developer. It was apparent, as early as last Spring, that Eclipse was closing in fast on JBuilder, but it was difficult to foresee such a gambit.

According to Gavin Clarke, of the Reg, the company hopes to offset JBuilder’s R&D expenses by relying on the Open Source community around Eclipse to drive API and feature improvements. Borland is apparently banking on the popular “sell it, free it” Open Source business model, hoping that the opensourced version will function as a loss leader for the next-generation commercial version of JBuilder.

I can already hear the cries about the new Borg in town, but whatever the reason for this surprising turn of events, it would be great news for users of both development environments, and the Java community in general.

On a related note, Information Week reports that the Eclipse Foundation will team up with the Los Alamos National Laboratory to make Eclipse a central host for parallel-computing tools, utilising Eclipse’s celebrated plugin architecture. The Eclipse Parallel Tools Platform Project team (what a mouthful!) has already produced a pre-release version of a Fortran Development Tools environment, based on the CDT 3.0 series (confusingly named CLDT).

Update (07:30): Interesting (and quite accurate, from what I remember) recap of Borland’s fickle attitude towards Open Source, from a Slashdot poster. Closing statement: “Those of us who’ve been observing Borland throughout all this expect them to maintain about as steady a course as a carload of squabbling thirteen-year-olds who just stole a car and a case of beer”.
Also: BDN Architect & Borland Evangelist, John Kaster, runs damage control and slams the Register. Official version: Borland is planning on building the “JBuilder experience” on Eclipse in addition to its current Primetime implementation. (I knew I just had to wait for the Score:5 goodies to build up in the Slashdot thread…)

Άλλα άρθρα σχετικά με το θέμα

• Harmonising Java
• “Mustang” Java more Open?
• CodeZoo launched, SpikeSource blooms
• Το γκαμπί της Γαλάζιας Κυρίας
• Και το όνομα αυτού: Blogentis
• Apache hierarchy
• Νέα βιβλία: Spidering Hacks, Hardcore Java
• Open Source web tools written in Java
• Ultimate framework or ultimate buzzword trap?
• Mars Rover Java-based web interface

Versant have href="http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=33391">announced
that they’re donating their commercial implementation of JDO 2.0 and the EJB 3.0 specification to Eclipse.

From the description of the relevant href="http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/eclipse-jsr220-orm/index.html">JSR220-ORM
Project proposal:

The goal of the project is to provide a 100% compliant implementation of the
href="http://www.jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/edr/jsr220/">JSR 220 [..EJB 3.0] and href="http://www.jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/pr/jsr243/index2.html">JSR 243 [JDO 2.0] specifications integrated with the Eclipse
platform.

The early draft of JSR 243 recently passed Public Review, while the second early draft of JSR 220 has not even reached the Public Review stage.

Dion Almaer
muses that this is a smart move for Versant, as their business model
isn’t to make money on an ORM, but selling OODMBS, and other OR
solutions. However, href="http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1787989,00.asp">eweek notes
that Versant’s delisting from the Nasdaq stock exchange last month lends a hue of desperation to the company’s latest move.

All of a sudden, corporate vendors cannot seem to move fast enough to support
enterprise directions for Eclipse: Oracle also href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/04/13/HNoracleejb_1.html">announced
last week that it was going to head up an Eclipse project to support EJB 3.0,
building on top of the company’s TopLink Java object-relational tool
and deployment platform, to develop an open-source EJB 3.0 ORM tool, focused
on design-time tooling and support deployment to J2EE application servers,
under the Eclipse Public License.

Versant’s platform is expected to be merged with the href="http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/eclipse-dtp/main.html"
target="_blank">Eclipse Data Tools Project, while Oracle’s project will become part of the Eclipse Web Tools Platform.

It’d be interesting to see how existing object-relational Open Source projects for Java, like hibernate and Apache OJB adapt to the changing landscape, and how Sun reacts to Eclipse corporate partners moving into it’s turf.

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Το πρώτο το ανακάλυψα ψάχνοντας να βρω, για την εκπόνηση της διπλωματικής
μου, μιά πλήρη λίστα από τα κινητά της αγοράς που υποστηρίζουν την
προδιαγραφή JTWI. H
JTWI είναι μιά προσπάθεια της Sun να "ομογενοποιήσει" την
κατακερματισμένη αγορά κινητών συσκευών Java, περιγράφοντας τα ελάχιστα API
που πρέπει να περιέχει η υλοποίηση της href="http://java.sun.com/j2me/index.jsp">J2ME σ’ ένα κινητό ώστε να
θεωρείται αυτό ότι έχει Java της προκοπής (σε managerese, "is next
generation industry standard compliant").

Προς το παρόν, τα API που προβλέπει η JTWI 1.0 (JSR 185) είναι τα CLDC 1.0
(JSR 30), MIDP 2.0 (JSR 118), και WMA 1.1 (JSR 120), ενώ σε κάποιες
περιπτώσεις προβλέπεται και η υλοποίηση των CLDC 1.1 (JRS 139) και MMAPI (JSR
135). Για τη διπλωματική μου, θα χρειαστώ κατά πάσα πιθανότητα ένα κινητό που
να υλοποιεί οπωσδήποτε το JTWI και το MMAPI, και μάλιστα, να επιτρέπει την
προγραμματική χρήση της κάμερας και την προγραμματική αποστολή και λήψη MMS
(το άλλο με τον Τοτό το ξέρεις;). Εναλλακτικά, αν το τελευταίο είναι αδύνατο,
θα προσπαθήσω να υλοποιήσω το messaging part με το J2ME Web Services API (JSR
172) (εδώ περνάμε στο domain του "έλα, Αλέκο..!").

Το J2ME Polish είναι ένα σύνολο από εργαλεία για την ανάπτυξη εφαρμογών J2ME
για πολλαπλές συσκευές στόχους που περιέχει, μεταξύ άλλων, μιά αρκετά
ενημερωμένη βάση
συσκευών που υλοποιούν την J2ME. Ψάχνοντας σ’ αυτή τη βάση, και στην
ακόμα πιό λεπτομερή href="http://www.club-java.com/TastePhone/J2ME/MIDP_mobile.jsp">βάση του
γαλλικού Club Java, έβγαλα το συμπέρασμα ότι μάλλον το μοναδικό προσιτό
κινητό που εξυπηρετεί όλες τις περίπλοκες απαιτήσεις μου, απ’ όσα
κυκλοφορούν στην ελληνική αγορά, είναι το href="http://www.club-java.com/TastePhone/J2ME/MIDP_Java_telephone.jsp?m=14&brand=SonyEricsson&model=K700i">
SonyEricsson K700i. (Αρνητική εντύπωση μου έκανε το γεγονός ότι το
super-duper smart phone href="http://www.club-java.com/TastePhone/J2ME/MIDP_Java_telephone.jsp?m=92&brand=SonyEricsson&model=P910i">
SonyEricsson P910i -το οποίο, σύμφωνα με τη βάση του J2ME Polish υλοποιεί
την JTWI- δεν υποστηρίζει καν το MMAPI. Αν κάποιος έχει περισσότερες
πληροφορίες γι’ αυτό, παρακαλώ ας με ενημερώσει). Το J2ME Polish εστιάζει
πιό πολύ στην ανάπτυξη παιχνιδιών, προσφέροντας και έτοιμο game engine, αλλά
είμαι σίγουρος ότι θα με βοηθήσει να παραδώσω ένα καλό αποτέλεσμα στη
διπλωματική μου. Αυτό, βέβαια, αν στηρίξουν τις προσδοκίες μου η συσκευή, ο
πάροχος κινητής τηλεφωνίας και τα API!

src="http://oneiros.gr/blog/media/qubscshot.jpg"
class="inlined" align="left" /> Σήμερα το απόγευμα, πάλι, ψάχνοντας μετά από
καιρό να βρω χρήσιμα προγράμματα για το P800 ενός φίλου στο γνωστό και μη
εξαιρεταίο p800.info, ανακάλυψα το href="http://open-qub.sourceforge.net/home.php">Open QUB, ένα visual
εργαλείο ανάπτυξης (IDE), γραμμένο σε Java, για την ανάπτυξη εφαρμογών σε
πλατφόρμα UIQ 2.1.
Καθ’ ότι το P800 μου δεν υποστηρίζει καν MIDP 2 και δεν έχω το χρόνο να
μάθω εις βάθος το UIQ, είναι μάλλον απίθανο να μπορέσω να υλοποιήσω την
εφαρμογή της διπλωματικής σ’ αυτό, αλλά τουλάχιστον μπορεί να γράψω
κανένα παιχνιδάκι για να περνάει η ώρα.

Και τα δύο λογισμικά διατίθενται με την άδεια GPL.

ΥΓ: Τελείως άσχετο, αλλά η παρουσίαση του J2ME Polish είναι φτιαγμένη στο href="http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/">καταπληκτικό S5 slide show
format του Eric Meyer, που χρησιμοποιεί μόνο XHTML, CSS, και JavaScript ( href="http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/primer.html">οδηγίες
ενταύθα). Πετάξτε το Powerpoint στα σκουπίδια href="http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/000631.html">όπου
ανήκει, πάραυτα!

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Slashdot has a thread on this as well, with some useful comments. According to the launch announcement:

CodeZoo exists to help you find high-quality, freely available, reusable components, getting you past the repetitive parts of coding, and onto the rest and the best of your projects.

It looks like CodeZoo will aggregate the wealth of Java related material that appeared in ONJava and other O’Reillynet subportals in the past. I can only hope it will prove as accessible as CPAN (but better organised). Well done, folks!

O’Reilly are partnering on CodeZoo with SpikeSource, the new enterprise Open Source startup, recently emerged from incubation, whose boss, Kim Polese, received Dan Farber’s overzealous endorsement for the position of the next OSI president. SpikeSource is banking on offering services and support to promote Open Source interoperability and it’s board reads like an Open Source All-Stars team. Among other members:

Brian Behlendorf, a founder of the Apache Web server software project and CollabNet firm for aiding software development; Mitchell Baker, president of the Mozilla Foundation; Marten Mickos, CEO of database seller MySQL; Tim O’Reily of O’Reilly Media; Lawrence Rosen, an attorney who has advised the Open Source Initiative; Dirk Hohndel, director of Intel’s Linux and open-source strategy;[..] Steven Weber, a political science professor at the University of California-Berkeley.

Small wonder that the company became an overnight IT media darling!

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IBM’s been really busy on the Open Source front lately; in a long awaited move, after the unprecedented opening up of 500 patents for free use by Open Source developers last month, IBM is now opensourcing 30 of it’s Alphaworks projects with Sourceforge.

IBM also announced yesterday the formation of a partnership with Zend Technologies, developers of PHP, to create a bundle which includes IBM’s Cloudscape-embedded database and Zend’s PHP development tools. Cloudscape itself was opensourced last August, when IBM donated 500.000 lines of code to the Apache Derby project. CNET News reports:

One industry executive who requested not to be named said that IBM’s push into PHP and scripting reflects IBM’s disillusionment with the Java standardization process and the industry’s inability to make Java very easy to use.”IBM’s been so fed up with Java that they’ve been looking for alternatives for years,” the executive said. “They want people to build applications quickly that tap into IBM back-ends…and with Java, it just isn’t happening.”

For his part, [IBM's vice president of emerging technology, Rod] Smith^(*) said that Java and PHP can be used for different tasks and said that IBM remains committed to Java.

In a show of masterful timing typical of the new Big Blue, this barrage of funky love for PHP comes exactly one year to the day after IBM’s famous open letter to Sun, urging them to opensource Java. No hints from anonymous execs are nessecary; for anyone who can read between the lines, it’s readily apparent what IBM’s latest moves indicate. The company who engaged in a huge switch to Linux and Java in recent years is fed up with Sun’s insistence to keep Java in an armlock and is considering another switch of it’s web development efforts, this time to PHP. Even if this is just a part-bluff, part-diversification strategy on the part of IBM, Java stands to lose considerable mindshare from developers fleeing the floundering ship .NET.

IBM is still commited to Linux, in light of the unraveling SCO lawsuit (only SCO itself is unraveling any faster), as last week’s unveiling of a plan to invest $100M to support it’s Workplace software on Linux desktops shows. It’s support for Java, by comparison, seems token. IBM’s partnership with Zend apparently includes setting up a new developerWorks subsite devoted to PHP. developerworks is a major locus of developer-oriented article publishing, rivalled only by O’Reillynet in activity and diversity of topics covered. Until recently, Java was the only programming language allocated a subsite, with material on PHP, Python, Perl and others relegated to a common Open Source subsite. IBM was experimenting with all these languages, but recent articles detailing how to connect PHP to Derby and Cloudscape had made it obvious that PHP was on IBM’s good graces.

PS: Groklaw features an excellent piece of comment comedy, on the last episode of the SCO NASDAQ delisting saga.

^(*) author of last year’s aforementioned open letter

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