Argentina students help Apache's effort towards OSS Java

A GROUP of Argentinean students and graduates has compatible Java VM code and has contributed it to the Apache Software Foundation's project to create an open source, J2SE 5.0-compatible java runtime and virtual machine. The project has received Sun's blessing, with Graham Hamilton from Sun commenting in his blog: "The licensing rules for J2SE 5.0 were carefully designed to allow independent, compatible open-source implementations of the J2SE specification".

To my surprise, two weeks ago a message from a fellow Argentine Miguel Montes from city of Cordoba -located more than 400 miles NW of Buenos Aires city, in the province bearing the same name- landed on the Project Harmony mailing list, it read: "we are contributing the packages javax.crypto and java.math on behalf of ITC (Córdoba Technology Institute). We have been developing this code for several months and we believe it is a valid contribution. Our code not only implements the full 5.0 API but also uses 5.0 features and syntax. As 5.0 is a stated goal of Harmony we hope that a 5.0 VM will be available soon. We are also contributing a set of test cases for both packages".

Some of the 15 Argentinean developers in their work place.
Thanks to Miguel Montes for the photo

So I couldn't let this opportunity pass and Miguel Montes, who lead the effort to create the "cleanroom" javax.crypto code sat down for a chat with this correspondent. Miguel told the INQuirer:

FC: Miguel, what can you tell us about the "ITC" group, what is it?
MM: ITC stands for Instituto Tecnologico Cordoba (Cordoba Technology Institute), and it's a foundation comprised of the six universities in the city of Córdoba and the Córdoba Technology Cluster (a group of local business in the IT sector). It's an environment in which business and universities can collaborate in joint projects.

FC: How did you get involved in Apache's Project Harmony?
MM: Our contribution to Harmony started as a joint project by the universities. We created three development groups and one testing group. Each group is lead by a university professor and the members of each group are advanced students or recent graduates from the different Computing and Information Technology schools at the different universities. We tried to build an heterogeneous group of students, I mean, that in every group there are members from each of the involved universities.

FC: When did the Harmony involvement begin?
MM: We started with this project around October 2005, and we choose as packages to develop javax.crypto, java.math, and java.rmi.

FC: Who leads each group?
MM: java.math is lead by Daniel Fridlender, a professor in the Mathematics, Astronomy and Physics school at the public university, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Famaf). The java.rmi group is led by Daniel Gándara, IT and Systems Engineering professor at UCC - Cordoba Catholic University. And finally javax.crypto is led by me. I'm into IT engineering at the IUA (Aeronautic University Institute), which depends from the Air Force. The testing group is led by Sergio Magris, from the National Technical University (UTN) at Cordoba.

FC: Why did you choose the crypto package?
MM: The selection of packages was inspired by the particular interests of every one of us when we choose to lead these groups. In my particular case, my main area of interest if IT security and cryptography.

FC: What are your thoughts about this project?
MM: The project has been extremely interesting, because it has give us the chance of developing basic libraries for a language like Java, an opportunity not very frequent. It has been also an important challenge to develop the procedures allowing us to fulfil the requirements of a "clean room" development. The code has been developed from scratch, following Sun's specifications, and without using the source code of other implementations.

We are at the ending stages of this project, and trying to find funding to continue with similar Java projects.

FC: How many people are involved in this project?
MM: In total, we are 15 people. I couldn't get everyone to pose for the picture.

FC: Thanks for your time and this opportunity to learn about you guys.
MM: My pleasure. We're at your disposal.

In a 1996 memo 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".µ

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