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Storm brews over proposed Java spec


By Robert Mullins
June 11, 2008 — 
Nineteenth-century German chancellor Otto von Bismarck is famous for noting that laws are like sausages: It is better not to see them being made. The same could be said of the process of making at least one Java Specification Requirement.

The Java Community Process (JCP) for creating JSRs has come under fire again, with allegations that backroom politics is influencing the evolution of JSR 277 and that Sun Microsystems is imposing its standard to the detriment of others. But a Sun Microsystems representative said the lively debate about the JSR is just part of the sausage-making process.

Last week, Ian Skerrett, marketing director for the Eclipse Foundation, criticized Sun’s influence over development of the proposed JSR 277 specification, covering the Java Module System. The root of the problem is the numbering protocol for tracking different versions of a module written in Java; Java Module System uses a four-digit scheme, OSGi only three.

Skerrett wrote in a June 5 blog posting that doing things Sun’s way could pose interoperability problems with the Eclipse-backed OSGi module system for building applications, and he called Sun’s attempt to flex its muscle a “mockery” of the JCP.

JSR 277 is to be included in release 7 of the Java Development Kit (JDK).

Skerrett added that Sun is playing politics, urging it to “stop the bilateral discussions,” and asked the company to replace JSR 277’s spec leads.

“For all Sun’s executive-speak about being a hip, open company, they continue to behave like an old fashion [sic] hardware vendor,” Skerrett wrote. Through an Eclipse spokesperson, Skerrett declined to comment further to SD Times. However, in a comment attached to an article about the controversy on The UK Register’s Web site, Skerrett qualified his remarks as being his own, and not an official position of the Eclipse Foundation.

Sun’s people working on JSR 277 believe that providing more complete information about the version of code being identified requires a four-digit versioning scheme, wrote Stanley Ho, co-spec lead of JSR 277, in a blog post.

“The OSGi policy of three-number versions … simply isn't enough for some programs,” Ho wrote. “The JDK uses four numbers … because of its longstanding practice … You can argue whether this is good practice, but it's the way the JDK is.”

One critic, Hal Hildebrand of Oracle and a member of the OSGi Alliance’s core platform expert group, accused Ho of “hubris” for foisting a whole new standard on a development community that has embraced the three-digit OSGi scheme. He asked on his blog why Sun feels the “need to invent yet another versioning system.”

"The absolute last thing we need from Sun in the Java Modules is Yet Another Brilliant Sun Shiny Invention that we'll have to suffer though for years,” wrote Hildebrand.

But the numbering schemes baked into Java Module System and the OSGi module, or “bundle,” can co-exist, and that’s part of the plan, claimed Danny Coward, chief architect for client software at Sun, and a member of the JCP executive committee.

“When an application is deployed in JDK 7 that expresses a dependency on a certain OSGi bundle, when the Java Module System with the OSGi support looks around for the OSGi bundle to resolve that, it will make the conversion step between the versioning numbering scheme in the Java Module System and the one in the OSGi bundle,” Coward explained. “There will be a little bit of code in JDK 7 that will manage that conversion and bridge that gap between the two schemes.”

Critics of the four-digit scheme forget that Java Module System is just a proposal in the early stages of development, said Coward. JSR 277 is currently in the early expert draft stage, which will be followed by a second expert draft and after that, the first public draft.

He said JSR 277 deliberations are open, that anyone can view the e-mails sent team experts, and there is ample discussion of the issues among many blogs.

“If you want to go and find the conspiracy, go and sign up and follow the discussions in the expert group. That’s where the action happens,” Coward said.

While unfamiliar with the specifics of the JSR 277 spec, software design consultant Allen Holub said the controversy reveals a fundamental flaw in the JCP: Sun often uses the process to push its own standards through, rather than developing standards by consensus.

The openness of a JSR to outside influence depends on the attitude of the project leads, Holub argued. JSRs attracting more corporate interest, whether from Sun or other technology companies, tend to be more closed than ones attracting more academic interest, for example. And Holub doesn’t think the information JSRs share on their Web pages is particularly useful.

“What I would really like to see is for technologies to arise spontaneously out of the community that actually solves problems and then for an organization like Sun to say, ‘This is great but it has to be standardized,’ ” said Holub, who is a part time lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a contributor to SD Times.

The JCP doesn’t work as standards bodies usually do, he continued. “Instead, what we have are things being invented by the standards committees, and when a standards committee invents something, the odds of it being useful are smaller than if it was technology that’s in use, because it’s useful.”


Related Search Term(s): Java, Sun


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