Mark J. Wielaard

Been playing with the Fedora 9 Preview release on my laptop this weekend. It feels pretty snappy and the integration of the various new components is pretty smooth. I didn’t find any personal show stoppers. So I will definitely upgrade my main machine as soon as the final release is out (currently scheduled for May 13th). And the Fedora 9 feature list is impressive. Except for the GCC 4.3 integration (and the 4.3 gcj/classpath parts were mostly backported to gcc 4.2 in Fedora 8 already), there isn’t anything official in the release notes about the fancy new java integration features as far as I can see. That is a shame because there is a lot of improvements in this area.

IcedTea 7 has been replaced by IcedTea 6 (and the package is now called openjdk). Including the appletviewer plugin (based on gcjwebplugin) and javaws (based on netx, but not installed by default yet). Eclipse 3.3.2 is included and seems to fly. It is pretty solid and imports and builds GNU Classpath from cvs out of the box (always a big plus with me). There are new official Java Packaging Guidelines. New guidelines describing how to deal with GCJ AOT compilation in Java packages. New guidelines describing how to package Eclipse plugins. And I was also happy to see things like JNA, Batik and FOP packaged now. Looks like java will slowly be better integrated with GNU/Linux distros!

Phil recently wrote up some examples of utilities created on top of the Frysk framework that you might find handy (part1, part2, part3). We now also have the frysk manual pages online.

It is that time of year again! All libre java projects and hackers come together to celebrate, plan, hack and discuss.

There is a Free Java devroom and a list of people and activities. See you there!

With IcedTea installed, which includes gcjwebplugin, I was browsing a little and suddenly hit a streaming ogg/theora video that used the Cortado applet. And it just worked! Including sound support! So install the latest IcedTea and Try It Out!.

A full GPLed streaming video and audio stack. How wonderful!

var fsf_widget_text = “Help protect your freedom!”;
var fsf_widget_d_btn = “Donate”;
var fsf_widget_share = “Share this widget.”;
var fsf_widget_size = “normal”;
var fsf_associate_id = “6”; // already a member? change this to your own associate ID and refer people – earn gifts from the FSF, see www.fsf.org/associate/referral

Join the FSF as an Associate Member! Click that link! I need only 1 more referral to receive great gifts!

update: And as Thomas pointed out in the comments, don’t forget about the FSF sister organizations, they need your support too!

• There is a nice interview with Thomas Fitzsimmons about Fedora and IcedTea.
• LWN published my article about Piecing together free java.

Want some free java on your IPone? Robert Lougher posted some screenshots of JamVM and GNU Classpath running on it:

Full war story on the JamVM forum.

November 13 2006 was Java Liberation Day. This brings back happy memories. On that day Sun acted and did not just make promises that one day they would release their java implementation as free software (something a lot of us GNU Classpath hackers didn’t believe would ever happen anymore – till that one day changed everything). They delivered the javac, hotspot and all of the phoneme code under the GPL (the other parts would follow at JavaOne) and they made one of the best GPL shows ever. The best part of the show (imho) is the “Collaborate” part where Jonathan Schwartz says “To the GCJ, GNU Classpath and Kaffe community, now is the time for us to to really get together and try to figure out how to do the right balancing equation, because we don’t want to do any redundant work with you and you don’t want to do any redundant work with us. And we are more than happy to pull all of our efforts together to go really promote ultimately what I think is what we all share, to drive freedom and opportunity for developers.” (see and listen for yourself – 40 seconds ogg/theora). I don’t think we are there yet, but we certainly made some nice progress this last year. We turned GNU Classpath and gcj into a free bootstrap platform for getting OpenJDK/IcedTea into all the major GNU/Linux distros. And I am especially happy to see various projects around GNU Classpath, like cacao, ikvm, midpath and others, find even more exciting things to do with this new future. They are creating interesting hybrids that will change the free software world. They bring libre java to your small and large devices, on Alpha, PowerPC, ARM, MIPS, and S390 architectures and create bridges with technologies, like mono/.net, that seemed impossible in the past. And everything comes with the source code which you are free to run, copy, distribute, study, change, share and improve in whatever way you want. Exciting times!

Rich Sands has a great overview of the java liberation year so far from Sun’s perspective.

Terrence Barr gives a Free Java ME and Mobile & Embedded Timeline.

Fedora 8 is finally golden. Download it now!
IcedTea is included, but only for the x86 and x86_64 architectures. GCJ is of course included for all architectures. The gcjwebplugin integration seems to just work out of the box.

Also if you haven’t played with virtualization yet and want to really know what the hype about Cloud Computing and the true potential of Any App, Anywhere, Anytime is then take libvirt and virt-manager for a spin. Whether you want to do virtualization through qemu/kvm, xen, it just works and scripting is easy.

Make sure to read the Fedora 8 Release Summary for lots of new feature descriptions and screenshots (Fedora Spins, PulseAudio, Nodoka, system-config-firewall, system-config-printer, BlueZ, gcjwebplugin, NetworkManager, laptop quirks, Compiz-Fusion, Pirut, GNOME Online Desktop , SELinux Kiosk, PolicyKit, virt-manager, Transifex, Rsyslog, Eclipse Europa).

I have been running it since test 3 on my laptop and it is pretty solid and a nicely polished GNU/Linux distro.

Red Hat and Sun Collaborate to Advance Open Source Java Technology

“Red Hat fully supports Sun‘s courageous decision to open source Java technology. After more than 10 years of continuous leadership, the Java technology ecosystem will enter an era of accelerated innovation and benefit from extreme pervasiveness on a wide range of environments,” said Sacha Labourey, CTO of JBoss, a division of Red Hat. “Through these strategic agreements, Red Hat commits to contribute to the Java platform and distribute a compatible, open source Java software implementation.”

One of the first benefits of this agreement is tighter alignment with the IcedTea project, which brings together Fedora and JBoss.org technologies in a Linux environment. IcedTea provides Free Software alternatives for the few remaining proprietary sections in the OpenJDK project.

“Sun welcomes Red Hat to the OpenJDK community,” said Rich Green, executive vice president, Software at Sun Microsystems. “It is a vote of confidence to have Red Hat, a leader in open source, engaging with the community on such a broad scale. When we open-sourced our Java software implementation, we hoped to see just this kind of collaboration between the GNU/Linux world and the Java technology ecosystem. It is gratifying to see the promise of open-source Java technology coming true with Red Hat’s leadership.”

Interesting times.