At 12:27 PM -0800 12/19/07, Mike Swingler wrote:
>Obviously, the existence of DP8, or it's requirements are no secret (see http://apple.com/java), however as it is unreleased software, we cannot discuss specific bugs or features in detail.
>
>Prior discussion of developer previews does not implicitly mean that discussing current DP's is okay.
>
>We would like to help everyone try the Java 6 Developer Previews as much as possible, but please adhere to your ADC confidentiality agreement and the instructions in the release notes. As always, please, please, please file bugs at http://bugreporter.apple.com, and let's try to keep the chatter on technical issues.
Mike's of course right -- the confidentiality agreement for getting pre-release Java betas from Apple precludes discussion of them on a public list. The confusion comes from the combination of these additional elements:
1) Developers (and their clients) very strong need for Java 6 on the Mac.
2) The obvious vitality and productivity of open models of development/bug-reporting/discussion (see SoyLatte).
3) The purpose of this list: "This list is for technical discussions related to Java on Mac OS X."
All of these are great reasons to discuss development of Java 6 for the Mac on this list and each of these reasons are quite logical and relate to the both the developer and the communities self-interest.
Apple's pre-release confidentiality agreement allows access to un-released software which is a developer benefit but the agreement itself provides no inherent benefit to a developer.
This contrast between internal and external motivations is the essence of why this topic will keep coming up.
I'd argue that Apple seriously retards the development of Java on the Mac by not developing the Java 6 implementation in a more open manner. There are lots of perfectly good reasons to require confidentiality when testing pre-release software ... but I can't think of any that would apply to getting a new version of Java running on the Mac.
Here's an example showing why Apple's closed-model of development for Java on the Mac is a real problem:
There has been a serious webstart bug in all of Apple's releases of the Java 1.5 series. It will cause a hang the second time a jnlp is accessed and a jar difference is supplied by the webstart servlet.
See more info about this bug and how to fix it here:
http://confluence.concord.org/display/CCTR/WebStart+OSX+Java+1.5+Fix
We reported it over a year ago and supplied a fix. It has not been fixed in several releases since then. Becuase this bug hasn't been fixed by Apple we have to either:
1) Always deliver complete copies of newer jars to Mac clients (much longer download times).
2) Remind our users to run our JavaWebStarFix program which requires admin rights which will fix Apple's Java webstart (and do this again on each new computer or whenever they get an update from Apple).
3) Re-write the JavaWebStarFix program so it can be folded into the jnlp deployment process (this get's complicated quickly due to security policies etc.).
I contrast this with how bugs that are found and fixed by external developers get quickly folded into more open development efforts.
There is a huge difference difference in progress of development and how robust the software is between closed and open development models. The fact that our webstart bug report and fix have been mis-handled make it less likely we'll submit bugreports in the future. This result (lessened interest in contributing bug reports and fixes) is in the aggregate a huge loss for all the players: Apple, us, other Java developers, users.
I have a hard time taking seriously software frameworks developed with a closed-model that are not also CORE requirements for the company. Cocoa is a CORE requirement for Apple, it would be hard to argue that Java is.
Perhaps when SoyLatte get's folded into the OpenJDK development effort and more progress is made getting Swing to work on Cocoa then Apple will then take responsibility for integrating it as part of a MacOS system in a similar way to how they have integrated Ruby.
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