The thing about Apache Harmony. Well, there are a lot of problems with Apache Harmony, but the thing about Harmony that is going to be a real problem for them is that I don’t see any way for their development process to sustain itself. Which development process largely consists of batting their eyes and posting gibberish to mailing lists, and occasionally getting someone to donate chunks of code.
To that point, they should have called the project “Apache Panhandle,” because they aren’t interested in any kind of Harmony with any other free Java hackers.
And so Intel dropped a bunch of AWT code on them recently. This is a huge step forward for them, and the indication is that they’re at more that 80% of 1.4 compatibility. That’s really nice, and it’s a huge leap forward for them. But that excitement doesn’t cover exactly how they plan to finish that last 20% (and more like 30% for 1.5), especially since that last mile is really going to be the hardest one to cover. It’s always like that, and anyone reading this knows it, such that it’s kind of dumb and obvious to point it out — the last 10%, the last 1%, are going to be the hardest to finish and will take the most time. And if Harmony’s plan is to continue to wait for code donations to magically appear, they’ll happily remain at 80% until we all finally forget about them.
Roman also pointed out another thing that’s weird and unsustainable about Harmony’s development: that it mostly seems to happen in secret, with occasional giant code drops. How is that free or open? And more importantly, how the hell can you coordinate that? Managing disparate groups is hard enough; doing when no-one does anything in the open is even harder.
I’m done ranting for now :-).
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sveinung | 30-May-06 at 5:06 pm | Permalink
It is free softwware if the license give you the 4 software freedoms. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
csm | 30-May-06 at 5:30 pm | Permalink
I know that Harmony is free software. I’m not disputing that.
I am talking more about how their development isn’t really happening in the open: it’s happening behind the doors of Intel and IBM. And more importantly, IT IS NOT SUSTAINABLE. Maybe Geir and friends do have a grand strategy beyond getting random source code donations, but if so, I haven’t seen it. Is begging for money a sustainable career choice? If so, maybe I’ll go do that instead.
And I’m still miffed that they chose not to work with GNU Classpath.
Geir Magnusson Jr | 31-May-06 at 6:35 am | Permalink
It was a good rant, but I don’t think it’s very fair.
There are two things we are doing - we’re growing as a community, and we’re growing as a codebase.
At the ASF, we understand very well the need for a healthy, self-sustaining community, which is why we have the Incubator, and why we have Harmony in the Incubator. We grok community.
Yes, we’re getting a lot of code contributions from outside, but it’s not being dictated/directed by the Apache Harmony project. This code clearly has been around longer than us, and people are choosing to donate to us.
We gladly accept contributions that we need, and then work hard to integrate it and people into the codebase and community. We’re very grateful for these contributions, we’re not going to apologize for them, and we aren’t going to refuse them. This is code that everyone can benefit from - the Apache License is a very liberal license, with few restrictions on freedom for users of the code.
Once in Apache Harmony,all futher development happens in the project,. Sure, people can go off on their own and submit patches or new chunks, but it’s not something we encourage.
Lastly, we’ve been around for only a year, and a good 5 months of that year was spent sorting out how we handle incoming IP and other process issues. How long has GNU Classpath been going at it? 7 years? Of course GNU Classpath is going to have a stronger community after 7 years of code work, but we’re only at 7 months, and I think we’re doing fine.
Lets see where Apache Harmony is in 7 years
geir
csm | 31-May-06 at 9:42 am | Permalink
Geir,
That’s fair, and I do hope the project gets more organized as time goes on. I know that most bad words that get exchanged between our groups are made by the nuts out on the fringes, or assholes like me (the difference being that nuts contribute no code, and assholes won’t shut up while they write code), but I still don’t see anything I’ve said as being wrong, and think that “we are still a new project” is nothing more than an excuse. And “Harmony” still has a real newspeaky flavor to it.
In the end, I reserve the right to be critical of you, even if unfairly
Thanks.
Lillian | 31-May-06 at 10:32 am | Permalink
I really agree with your post. How is it really open if the community can’t freely contribute to it? It was all done under cover…
csm | 31-May-06 at 11:17 am | Permalink
Oh, and also, I do understand that this might be because of Intel’s own internal badness, not really reflective of the ASF.
I work for Seagate, for fsck’s sake, so I understand corporate bureaucracy.