What’s So Great About Harmony?

What exactly are the goals of Apache's Harmony project?

On Apache’s site, there is a goal for the Harmony stated as:

"The aim of the project is to produce a large and healthy community of those interested in runtime platforms tasked with creation of:
- A compatible, independent implementation of the Java SE 5 JDK under the Apache License v2
- A community-developed modular runtime (VM and class library) architecture."

But is this one goal enough to make it compelling to use it? First of all, it will be out of date when it first launches, as Java has moved on past version 1.5. Also, with Java moving to GPL, is there really a need for another open-source version of Java? In my opinion, the answer is no.

Why? Because it splinters the community, which is something Microsoft attempted to do back in 1997 until Sun litigated. I feel it’s better to have the entire community build and deploy Java software on a standard VM. Having multiple implementations of Java 1.5 (and Java 1.6 eventually, and so on) will be confusing, and may lead to inconsistencies in application behavior.

The danger is that Java will be reduced to nothing more than a specification that is open to implementation by multiple vendors as they see fit. This very same problem has plagued CORBA from the start, and has caused application developers great pains as their components might work with some ORBs, and not others.

Because Sun’s Java is open to the community to contribute code, and especially since it is moving to GPL, perhaps it’s best if the entire community got behind one Java platform. Even if you don’t like Sun Microsystems, the move to GPL removes Sun as the sole owner of Java. It truly belongs to the community. I suggest you feel empowered; download the source to the latest Java platform; and stay united as one community around one standard Java VM. Let me know if you agree.

-EJB

Posted by Eric Bruno at 04:07 PM  Permalink