IBM Joins Project Harmony

This News.com article tells about IBM throwing their support behind the Apache Foundation's "Project Harmony", an attempt to implement Sun's J2SE standard in an open source form.

IBM is almost certainly has as much Java knowledge and expertise as anyone, including Sun Microsystems, themselves. IBM has their own Java Virtual Machine, the development of which should convince any skeptics of IBM's prowess. It's possible IBM could donate their JVM to the Harmony Project, though there has been absolutely no word on this from IBM.

Surrounding all this is a tense atmosphere which has IBM and many others calling upon Sun Microsystems to fully open the Java source code. Sun resists, tenaciously. They maintain Java needs a corporate steward (themselves) to keep it pure and prevent unauthorized branching. I, personally, appreciate their point. Look at what happened with Microsoft, who developed an unauthorized and partially incompatible JVM, yet called it "Java". It took Sun years and millions of dollars in legal expenses to shut that down with legal actions.

I think Sun's action proves they are a willing and worthy steward for Java. I cannot embrace the notion that everything MUST be open-source. That level of philosophic extremity is beyond me. The defining factor in this case is how open Java actually is. Sun has responded to criticisms of the "Java Community Development Process" by making it easier to contribute code to and the decision making process about which code to include more open to outside input. The Java community is not closed, by any means. It is also not a common open development project and all I can say about this is "so what"?

It is not as if an open source community cannot protect their product. That is not my point nor Sun's. My point is that Sun has already proven themselves as a worthy steward and has all the necessary resources to continue as such. They are obviously willing to change to accomodate the needs of the Java user's community. It is possible branding pressures could keep Java pure, as the advocates of opening up the source code assert. But Sun already has the mechanisms in place to do this (along with enforcing developed and developing standards) and I see no compelling reason to change this. To me it is a case of leaving well enough alone and allowing Sun to modify the development process as they see fit in response to the developers who actually do the work.

Java has some problems. That is not surprising considering the size of the systems that comprise it. Succeeding versions do not have adequate compatibility with previous implementations. Efficiency of code execution needs improvement. Sun is attacking all the problems aggressively, in concert with the development community, though progress has not been as rapid as some would hope. I trust Sun in this, as do many of the Java developers I know.

The kids are all right. Leave them alone.

Jack