Eclipse.. the forgotten path

Ever tried opening up the plugins folder of Eclipse 3.1 or greater? What is the difference between the previous versions and the current ones? Just look at the screenshots.

Equinox is an Eclipse project to structure Eclipse software not just as a collection of plugins, but as a collection of OSGi bundles. OSGi bundles is an approach to break an application into components (jar files), large collections of classes with a unified interface that is well-encapsulated and easily reusable amongst multiple applications.

Most important part : OSGi also enables applications to dynamically load (and better yet, unload as well) these components at runtime as optional functionality is needed (and no longer needed). Meaning your SQL Plugins or XML Plugins actually do not get loaded during startup. They are runtime loads. God… my head rolls.

This helps the application manage its footprint, e.g. the memory that it consumes in order to run. Rather than using memory to load every option that any user may ever need, it only loads the kernel functionality and then loads optional functionality when the user asks for it by loading OSGi bundles.
Equinox helps formalize an approach to developing Eclipse applications as these OSGi bundles.

A particularly interesting part of Equinox is the Server Side OSGi (sub?) project. OSGi has mostly been used to create desktop applications. This enables you to start the application quickly with a small footprint and then load options as needed. What if you could do the same in a server application? The application starts quickly, then as client apps invoke optional functionality, the app dynamically loads components to provide the functionality. Interesting idea, so check it out at http://www.eclipse.org/equinox/server/ (project under development)

War of the worlds — Ripples from OpenJDK

Part 1

As we all know, Sun, after two years of meditation, broke its silence last November crowning itself as the torchbearer for the open source initiatives.
It announced that Java SE, ME and the Glassfish projects (Glassfish is the open source effort for an JEE 5 compatible application server – incubated and developed in the java.net community) is open sourced under the GPL v2 (GNU’s General Public License).

This has brought huge applause from the open source communities, more especially, from the linux circles which, till recently, were upset with the Sun’s distribution of Java through the CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License). CDDL states that Java could not be bundled with the Linux distros. Redhat, Suse and a few other distros, however, bundled JRockit (Bea’s proprietory JVM), whose license allowed redistribution.

What does the GPL say? Modify the open code howmuchever you want. Keep it private in your own system. But if you want to redistribute, share your modification to everybody else. Meaning, redistribute under GPL again. (Nice. isn’t it). And GPL is also known as the Grand Daddy of the Open Source licenses with about 70-80% of the open source projects under it.

Why did Sun release Java under GPL? It had its own reasons. And Microsoft was one big reason when they created a buggy JVM based on JDK 1.1. They called it the MSJVM (Microsoft Java Virtual machine) with Microsoft extensions which made applets run faster on windows machines, and eventually forgetting the “Write Once Run Anywhere” concept of Java. Sun sued and won $ 20 million. Microsoft is never to use ‘Java’ or any of its trademarks for its newly cooked up JVM. What do you think “Microsoft VM” that is installed in our Internet Explorer is?

Naturally, Sun was afraid that there will surely be forks for Java implementation and which might be incompatible with each other. GPL promised prevention of forks to some extent.

Part 2

IBM, which was the leading “pressurizer” that wanted Sun to open source java, is now upset over the announcement. Last year, there were open letters and hues and cries by IBM all over the open source community asking Java to be open sourced. In fact IBM made an open challenge to Sun that IBM would open source its proprietory JVM if Sun open sourced its version. Then why is IBM upset over this announcement. Reason.. Lot many reasons — all with business intend.

1) Apache Harmony, as you understand, is an Apache project started around May last year. What are they doing? They are writing open source Java SE. An equavalent (lets not say competitor) to Sun’s Java implementation. Recent visit says that 1.25 million lines of code is already contributed to it. IBM is one of the lead players here other than Intel. IBM joined this project soon after its start just to show itself as a serious open-source player and to bring down Sun’s reputation among the already disgruntled OS community.

2) The GPL v2 licensing for OpenJDK. IBM wants Sun to contribute to Apache Harmony or at least bring OpenJDK under Apache License. Whats so special in Apache license? — it allows use of the distribution of the source code in both open source and “closed source” (proprietory) software. Meaning IBM can go ahead and wrap the OpenJDK and market it. The same way it produced Websphere Community Edition wrapping Apache Geronimo, Websphere commercial version wrapping Apache Web server and its Rational products wrapping Eclipse.

While IBM was saying that Opensourcing Solaris as OpenSolaris was not a big deal for Sun (Solaris is well known as the most secure Unix based operating systems), and that Sun’s interest in the community could only be seen when it outsources Java, questions came up with the OS community that if open-sourcing Solaris, a home grown product of Sun, was not a big deal, what is stopping IBM open source its AIX which uses a lot of open source code in it. In fact, IBM has been advertising that AIX is a superior Unix. Why not share it with the Linux community?

Sure there exists a cold war situation between the giants. And IBM is on the losing side.

IBM opens Windows of suspicion.