Darwin's Theories - Software Industry category

OpenMoko revisited

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 14:35:00 GMT

OpenMoko was an early open-source (hardware and software) cell phone project. It was designed to be flashed without having to root it or unlock a bootloader; the download tools were open source. It was great, except, it had an A5 CPU, no camera, no 3G and no prospect of it, and no real distribution strategy or scalable business model. So the company (openmoko.com) somewhat imploded.

However, since the hardware was open, another company has picked up the pieces. Golden Delicious Computer (nice name) makes a drop-in replacement motherboard with an A8 CPU, 3G (UMTS) and optional camera, that re-uses the case, LCD and some other components to upgrade your existing OM (or you can buy a complete new phone).

The only downside is the price, which is, ahem, competitive with commercial phone products of the same capacity. But at least it proves that openness can keep projects alive after the originators have moved on... See link to ordering page and current pricing.

Apple and OpenJDK

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 17:37:00 GMT

Lest anyone doubt Apple's committment to working with Oracle on the OpenJDK project, Apple just emailed me back on a bug that I filed against the Mac implementation of Java... way back... in... 2003?!? Yup. Apple BugID #3179542 has finally been closed, a just about eight years to the day after I filed it.

"Engineering believes that this issue has been resolved. Java 7 for Mac OS X as provided by Oracle will offer the directory structure that you seek."

I'd actually moved on from OS X on my desktop many of those years ago, and had utterly forgotten sending this report, but it's good to see them finally taking Java seriously, or at least making an effort.

Islands in the Stream

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:00:00 GMT

Some will say that Apple's iPad is the be-all and the end-all of portable computing. I say nay.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Apple. But look at the history. Datapads are not a new idea - Alan Kay's DynaBook and Mark Weiser's ideas of Ubiquitous Computing - both from the 1980's, with Weiser explicitly using the term Pad - predate the iPad by almost three decades. As much as I generally dislike Microsoft, their push for the "Tablet PC" probably led to some advances in hardware. Amazon's Kindle and Sony's reader both pushed hardware makers to build better screens and raised the bar on users' expectations.

And one important thing that Weiser advocated in the 1980's is still missing (full disclosure: I admit to being in the field long enough to have read his papers when they were originally published). In Weiser's world you could just slide a task you were working on from a handheld pad to a wall-sized whiteboard or to a wristwatch-sized device for storage, and things like active TCP/IP connections would automatically move onto the new computing platform. While you may be able to drag a project from a Mac OS application to a USB stick for storage, this is a far cry from having running applications movable from one computing device to another. People are indeed working on this problem, but a general solution is not yet at hand, as far as I know. It's not something you can buy today from Redmond or from Cupertino, at any rate.

Until this happens, our computers will remain isolated islands in the stream. Even if they are iPads.

JavaOne without Moscone Center?

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:50:00 GMT

After a very long and uncomfortable silence, Oracle, having passed the last(?) regulatory hurdle to their acquisition of Sun Microsystems, today announced that the JavaOne conference will in fact go ahead - this year. It will be co-located, but not merged, with Oracle OpenWorld; this year's dates are September 19-23 in San Francisco. That means there is still time for the refereed-paper approach that has been used in past JavaOnes. Partly since Moscone cannot hold all the attendees who would take part in both programs, and partly to reinforce the fact that it's not merged, JavaOne will be held in three hotels near Moscone (the huge keynotes will however be held in Moscone). I was heartened to hear Justin Kestylin of Oracle say that they want to "maintain the soul of JavaOne." We shall of course be watching to see how well they do at that.

JavaOne will also be going on the road: the "Sun Tech Days" program will be replaced by regional JavaOne conferences; the initial locations over the next year will be China, India, Russia and Brazil.

There is an FAQ coming within the next day on Oracle Developer Network. The following programs will be preserved: java.net, java.sun.com, Java Community Process, and others.

Watch otn.oracle.com for the FAQ - I'll update this with the link once it's available.

Another Top 10

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:29:00 GMT

Here we go again: