Intel donates Swing code to Apache's open source Java

SOFTWARE COMPANY, Intel, announced, via its "Middleware Division" the contribution of AWT and Java2D packages, along with a Swing package to the Apache "Project Harmony", which has been working since May 2005 to create a "Clean Room" implementation of Sun's Java VM, that remains compatible with Sun's spec and passes the official TCK test suite, thus becoming "officially compatible" with the Sun led standard.

Unlike others, this effort has been specifically praised by Sun, which made changes to the Java license to allow the 'clean room' development of compatible VMs. Graham Hamilton, Sun VP said last year: "The licensing rules for J2SE 5.0 were carefully designed to allow independent, compatible open-source implementations of the J2SE specification".

Alexey Petrenko from Intel's "Middleware Division" said: "I am glad to announce next contribution to Harmony classlib on behalf of Intel" and proceeded to describe the contents of the different source code packages. The modules, according to the announcement were tested with ClassEditor, JUnit and the popular editor application jEdit. To build the native code you need MSVC or the Intel C compiler -on Windows- and GCC or the Intel C compiler on 32-bit Linux. "The Java2D implementation uses GDI+ library on Windows and Xlib on Linux", informed Petrenko. Right now it's all source code-only for the interest of programmers, but Geir Magnusson from La Intella hinted that a new binary snapshot for windows and linux will be published here, once Intel's submission is formally accepted into the project.

Geir Magnusson from Chipzilla along with Tim Ellison from (once)-Big Blue's Java technology centre in Blighty showed off this cleanroom implementation of Swing at JavaOne a couple weeks ago. "I was proud to demonstrate JEdit running on Harmony, that's right, with Swing/AWT code" he said, Tim also ran other java apps in top of Harmony's experimental java VM builds, including "RSSOwl 1.2 atom/rss news reader (www.rssowl.org), Tomcat 5.5.17, the JSP and Servlet examples, and Eclipse 3.2 RC4". Slides of the Harmony presentation at JavaOne are available over here -you must search for keyword "Harmony" and notice the username and password shown on the results page.

The reception of this code was warmly received by the Harmony development community, and even Sun has been promising for some time to open source its own Java VM. They say, however, that they're unsure of "how" not when. Sun's new ponytail-CEO Jonathan Schwartz blogged last week: "we're now making serious progress on open sourcing Java (and despite the cynics, using a GPL license is very much *on* the table". Well, they better hurry up, because the Apache project may beat them to the task.

Sun has been afraid of "letting go" the platform completely, fearing it would "fork" into several incompatible versions, as happened for a brief time years ago with Microsoft's attempt to "derail java" -the Vole's windows-only extensions to the spec broke Java's "write once, run anywhere" appeal and led to a long legal battle between the firms-. In a June 20, 1996, memo entitled "windows & internet issues" Microsoft's then-VP Paul Maritz explained that it was necessary for the firm to "fundamentally blunt Java/AWT momentum" in order to "protect our core asset Windows - the thing we get paid $s for".

Developer Endre Stolsvik sided with Sun's concerns with regard to opening up their own Java VM, saying on the Harmony mailing list: "I believe that (an open source VM from Sun) could fragment into a million different, half abandoned projects without any proper steering", adding that "Open Source java wouldn't be the same if there wasn't some standard to follow and adhere to".

Hundreds, if not thousands of open source apps are already written in Java, and it's expected that a compatible, open source implementation of Sun's VM will increase its adoption. µ

See also:
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