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Jonathan Schwartz: Java Jedi?

Much has been made of last week's group of blogs reacting to the onstage JavaONE open source tease, including my own blog (which I won't bother hrefing, since most of you reading this also read that one.

Boy, I was miffed when I wrote that blog! My pal and former Sun colleague, Duncan Davidson did a better job of expressing our joint frustration in his comments on Simon Phipps' "ouch" posting...as people who worked at Sun and long believed that Open Source Java was important, URGENT even.

There's a new crop of people working to free Java. Some of them are working very hard (it's not easy work, I can assure you). Jonathan Schwartz is apparently one of them. As I was leaving Sun, Jonathan assured me that Open Source was a huge component of his strategy for transformation of the company and I believed he was sincere.

But Sun is incredibly bound in internal politics, and even a CEO can't just "make it so" without some jockeying...because the "antibodies" are always there to guard the status quo. JavaLand (as we used to call the group who work on Java at Sun) is almost a law unto itself. Part of the art of running a large group inside of Sun is effectively pushing your group's agenda in Senior Staff in the face of fairly ruthless competition for resources and "thought leadership". Difficult as it may be to believe, not even the CEO can simply tell a Divisional VP what to do, because doing so is the same as negating that person's authority and effectively firing them. Dealing effectively with the VPs at Sun is more like Aikido.

At Sun internal competition is actually a valued cultural norm...internally the company is run sort of like a free market economy. Its a tough job riding herd on so many relentless internal competitors (as Pat Sueltz found out). It is essential to finesse those Divisional VPs. Loiacono (who is a really nice man) was not very effective in this role IMHO. Back in the Day...Ed Zander acting as COO (and de facto VP of Software, no matter who actually sat in the chair) was like some Jedi Master at this practice (Yoda maybe?) and was only rarely trumped by direct appeals to Scott (because next to nobody ever got around Ed). This is one reason that gaining CEO status earlier this year was a big deal for Jonathan. It closes off that route of appeal to Scott and sets him up as the new Jedi Master of Sun.

When I was hired at Sun, it was because Alan Baratz had made a public promise that Java source would be released (under SCSL) to build a source code community and they needed a Community Manager. It was a crummy job. Next to none of the folks in JavaLand wanted Java source to be released in this way, but a public statement had been made. They did everything they could to subvert this required action, ensuring it would be a wasted effort. Barratz was on his way out the door anyway...and Zander wasn't in favor of opening the source.

In my opinion the JavaLand folks were incredibly arrogant about the supremacy of their vision for Java. They didn't want any help, even on SCSL terms. The Open Source movement was treated with suspicion at best. People with an Open Source vision for Java were (and in some cases still are) treated as idiots. With all this prejudice working against it, you might be surprised that even SCSL Java happened at all (much less FOSS Java). "Public announcements must be honored" is another deep cultural value at Sun. Its the whole reason that three years later getting Jason Hunter onstage at JavaONE in 2002 was such a big deal. It meant that JCP rules really were going to change...and it might mean that last week's tease really was a big deal.

Consider Jonathan as the next Jedi Master of Sun. Hey, he's got the ponytail and the hip attitude. I think its probable that Jonathan's part in the now famous Open Source Java tease at JavaONE was another example of Senior Staff politics acting out in public. Its not an elegant way to execute strategy, but a Jedi has to honor local customs.

"Rich, are we going to Open Source Java?"...it demands an answer (as most of the blogs on the topic have mentioned). In front of a reported 20,000 people. So now Rich is on the hook. My last blog on this topic expressed skepticism. I still think the antibodies must be furiously massing to undermine a truly FOSS Java from Sun..., but if they actually manage to release FOSS Java I'll be the first one to cheer...I just hope its not too late. I would really love to see Jonathan and the people trying to change Sun succeed.

Old Hippies - John Gage @ Wavy Gravy's 70th Birthday

Those of you who have actually met me know that at heart I'm a hippy. Canonical's Matt Zimmerman couldn't stop pointing this out last week at DebConf once he'd figured it out :-) (Hi! Matt). I'm really too young to have been a hippy...I was 10 in 1969. I was already a hippy in my head, though, when my hapless parents took a wrong turn while traversing San Francisco (no easy task while towing a boat) and ended up on Fell Street along side the Panhandle on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in August. I have no idea what was going on...some sort of concert or festival. We saw people blowing bubbles and people playing music and people dressed in diaphanous clothes and huge butterfly wings and I *really* wanted to take one of them with us (there were plenty of hitchhikers). But my Dad said, "Lock the car doors...They steal children!" and sped on down the street. My little brother and I looked at each other and we both knew we were going to move to San Francisco just as soon as we were old enough!

Lisa Law.

Wavy G in all his glory. He wore this suit towards the end of last weekend's 70th Birthday Bash.

Wavy Gravy is one of my hippy heros. He and his Hogfarm Commune tribe members were the caterers at Woodstock. But Wavy was inestimably cool even before Woodstock. He grew up in a house next door to Albert Einstein's in Princetown, New Jersey. As a young man he was Bob Dylan's friend in Manhattan and Lenny Bruce's manager for awhile. He was "on the bus" with Ken Kesey and Neal Cassady. And he put his body on the line countless times in protests to end the Vietnam war. I wish I were half as brave as Wavy.

Last weekend was Wavy's 70th Birthday Party which he celebrated in typical fashion with a benefit concert for the Seva Foundation with Bob Weir and Ratdog, Mickey Hart and Friends, Steve Earle, my favorite...Gillian Welch and a bunch of the "regulars" at these events (Yoo-Hoo the Clown, Linda Tillery, etc.). Every person paying for a ticket at this event pays for one person's cataract operation through Seva, so you get to hear great music and feel good about it.

Because 70 is a big milestone birthday, there was a multimedia show on the topic of Wavy's life and times, arranged by Google and Sun's own John Gage! It was totally touching to see Wavy and his wife Jahanara (and John) on their sentimental journey around Google Earth and the adventure they had back in the day that led to so much downstream goodness (over $60,000,000 raised and dispersed to restore sight and help people in India, Nepal, Tibet, Cambodia, Tanzania as well as Chiapas, Guatemala and even in the USA (Native American Diabetes outreach).

Now, I'd like to say that I already knew about John Gage having traveled with Wavy and Larry Brilliant from Seva "on a bus trip around Asia" that led to the creation of the Seva Foundation...but I'd be lying. I wasn't surprised, though. Gage has always struck me as a fine human-being first and Sun executive second. Many a government in the Developing World has decided to look into FOSS as a result of a conversation with Gage. He and I spent some quality time a few years ago at a WSIS related event in Lyons, France. It was a double treat to see him onstage next to Jah, reminiscing.

I've been sending my child (and anyone else's children I could find) to Wavy's Camp Winnarainbow for years now...If you want to meet Wavy and catch his vibe firsthand I'd suggest you consider enrolling in Adult Camp...Or go to the Seva Foundation website and spend some time envisioning what a gift of money or time from you might mean to someone in a Developing Country.

Its never too late to become an old hippy.

What Sun Doesn't Want You To Know About Java and Open Source

Yes, its been dog's years since I've blogged...but I just couldn't be silent about this.

Today at JavaONE my pal Geir Magnusson is announcing that Harmony has full support for SWING/AWT. This is really big news if you're following Harmony from the sidelines (as Sun has been doing).

You see, Sun's compatibility rules for for the Java language have long included a "gotcha" in the form of a chunk of code for user interface, for which there are no compatibility tests (SWING/AWT). Original Java Licensees were told they just had to "use Sun's code" or they weren't 'compatible'. Apple's MacOSX integration of Java into their Aqua interface was a notable exception (about which Sun was none too pleased back in the day, but decided it was too small a market to really fuss over). IBM tested these waters as well with Eclipse, an IDE which initially didn't support SWING but later was forced to add SWING support because developers wanted it. But Eclipse wasn't an implementation of the Java language.

Earlier this week we all heard about Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green hinting they were about ready to release Java under some OSI-approved license. Supposedly they just need to nail down "How to Deal with Compatibility". I read this news with some irony, since I know that they bloody well know exactly what to do already. Its been discussed every year since 1999 inside of Sun. Their covenant with Apache and the Geronimo has already successfully demonstrated that it can be done (compatible FOSS reimplementations of Sun-generated specifications). They are simply being disingenuous. What they really mean is "How can we placate the FOSS community without giving up control?" which is the age-old question for Sun.

For a long time Sun believed that Free Java efforts such as Kaffe/GNU Classpath were not a real threat because they were poorly organized to actually implement the entire set of class libraries (which admittedly is a huge task). But even if the class libraries were implemented in toto, there was always the fact that they couldn't possibly do SWING. Fans of Free Java inside of Sun have been arguing for years that Sun should free SWING to enable the Kaffe/GNU Classpath effort as a hedge against something more organized (and therefor more troubling) such as Harmony.

So...I'm wondering how long it will take the various Linux distros to figure out that they can ship Harmony (as they ship Apache) pre-installed and ready to use (even while they continue to put Sun's JRE in the "non-free" directory, where its still two clicks away from users).

Free Java marches on...