DonaldOJDK Blog

As noted on a recent /. and TSS thread, some have noticed that a tool known as the Java SE Time Zone Updater (aka “TZUpdater”) is no longer publicly available.  There seems to be some misunderstanding about the purpose of the tool and the impact it’s non-public availability will have.

You do not require the TZUpdater in order to have correct timezone information in your Oracle Java SE applications – it comes automatically with every version and gratis update of Oracle Java SE.

Oracle Java SE 6 is now well past end of public updates.  Users are always encouraged to update to the latest gratis public releases available.  Users who choose to run older and not publicly supported versions, wanting updates and tools such as the tzupdater for these old, not publicly supported versions, can consider commercial long term support options.

- Don

I’d like to thank everyone who helped spread the word on the new Code Signing requirements and guidelines starting with 7u21.  In particular, Markus Eisele did a fantastic job with his blog, and also an article in Heise Developer (in German) – thanks @myfear!

We’ve just added two new FAQ questions to the OTN article on Code Signing in response to a two particularly frequent questions.  The first is in response to questions around applet signing, and in particular the fact that prior to 7u21 signed apps were assumed to want full permissions, and unsigned were assumed to want to be sand-boxed.  See the FAQ “How has this changed the underlying security model of Java applications in the browser?” for more information.

The second question relates to warnings when running applets in mixed (signed and unsigned) environments (particularly as it relates to JavaScript).  7u21 expanded the scope of when these warning would be presented, and we have addressed how developer can manage these situations in the FAQ “Does the code signing requirement impact “mixed code” environments?“.

Both questions contain links to the product documentation with additional information for developers and admins.

- Don

The April 16th, 2013 Critical Patch Update for Java SE (7u21) will change the launch behavior related to running Java Applets and Web Start Applications.  Users will be presented with a dialog(s) that will provide additional information to the user who can choose to continue or terminate execution.

In order to have the best possible user experience, your Applets and Web Start Applications must be signed.  More information related to this can be found at the link above.

The Oracle Java SE 6u41 release, made available on February 19th, 2013, is the last public update in the Java 6 stream.  The following links may be helpful for people looking for more information about this process:

• Oracle Java SE End of Public Updates Policy
• EOL’ing a version of Java Is a Process, Not an Event
• Java 7 Adoption Guide
• Incompatibilities between Java SE 6 and Java SE 7
• Migrating from Java SE 6 to Java SE 7
• Oracle Java SE Commercial Support Program

Note that the phrase ‘End Of Life’ (EOL) is historical, and is now more commonly and accurately referred to as “End of Public Updates”.  Also, the above information is specific to the Oracle JDK.  If you get your JDK or JRE from another vendor or distribution, please check with them for their EOL or End of Public Updates plans and policies.

As I noted last week, I’ll be moderating a “Role of Java in Innovation” panel during the community keynote.  It’s on Thursday at 9am in the Continental Ballroom (same room the exhibit hall has been all week).

We have a strong panel including:

• Chris Anisczyk, Open Source Manager, Twitter
• Mårten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus
• Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation
• Mike Olson, CEO of Cloudera
• Paul Perrone, CEO of Perrone Robotics

Here are some questions I’m considering asking – I would love to hear any suggestions on questions or themes you’d like to see covered.

- Brief intro of each panelist and describe how Java fits into your ecosystem (Cloud, Big Data, Communities, Social, Hardware Tinkering).
- What does innovation even mean to you? (Audience is diverse, just trying to establish that innovation means invention, or improving on inventions. Also, to establish that invention of technology may be focus in many minds, but invention of business model, channels and markets equally important).

Some general questions
- What is the VC perspective on platform choice in start ups?  Do VC’s care?
- Bill Joy of Sun once famously said “innovation happens elsewhere” – why is it that communities do such a great job at innovation?
- Is there anything other communities are doing better that the Java community should emulate?
- Hardware tinkering seems to be all about heterogeneity (many boards, many architectures) – does this actually help with innovation, or hinder innovation? Aren’t we just reinventing the wheel over and over?

Questions around the Three Themes:
Diversity
- Social diversity (geo, skill level, etc) — how does it help you innovate, what are the challenges?
- Tech diversity — does the technology breadth of Java help, or hinder, innovation in your community?

Rapid Prototyping
- Is complexity (in the platform / language) becoming a hindrance to pace of innovation? Are we (going to)/(are) facing the innovators dilemma?

Sharing and Remixing
- Java culture seems to embrace sharing and remixing more than others, why?  Can we cultivate it any further?

- Don

During the Community Keynote next Thursday at JavaOne, I’ll be leading a panel on “The Role of Java in Innovation.”  The goal is to highlight just a few of the many segments where Java is front and center in Innovation.

What are some really hot technology segments right now, areas where anyone can easily see lots of innovation?  Big Data, Cloud, Social Apps, Mobile, Hardware Tinkering come to mind.  Then consider the many developer communities where lots of innovation is happening, and has been happening for a long time, like Apache, Eclipse and relatively new on the scene github.  Java is front and center in pretty much every one of these segments and communities.

It’s not by accident, it’s because Java has a number of attributes that make it a great vehicle for innovation.  My colleague Cecilia took a stab at trying to annotate  how it all fits together, and I think this nails it:

In a nutshell, the culture of Java, it’s breadth and depth has led to a lot of diversity (in every sense of the word).  Java (in conjunction with OS licenses) has promoted sharing and remixing.  Java (thanks to it’s strong tooling ecosystem) has enabled rapid prototyping on a grand scale.  

All these things help make innovation happen.

I’ll follow up later in the week with more information about the panel, and include a call for questions.

- Don

As I mentioned back in the spring, one thing that surprised me about my first year in the Java organization is it’s breadth.  As a long time “enterprise Java guy”, I had underestimated the global and technological reach of Java – it really does gets crunched into the smallest of mem spaces, wrapped up and hurled around in all kinds of devices, machines and applications.

I think these stories and applications get lost in the “enterprise shuffle” at JavaOne.  So I’m glad this year we are embedding (pun intended) a sub-conference called “Java Embedded at JavaOne“.  It’s more business and strategy focused than you get at the main JavaOne – and it’s loaded with content from partners and ecosystem participants who are showing off some of their successes and use cases, and some glimpses at what’s possible with the emergence of M2M.  It’s only 2-days, and even gets you into the Pearl Jam concert  

If you’re at all interested in this space, you should check out more details here.

 - Don

I’m happy to announce that Oracle has become a hardware sponsor for EclipseCon Europe 2012.  

I highly encourage other organizations to do the same, if not for this EclipseCon, then at any time in the future.  Having funding to support additional hardware purchases gives the Eclipse webmasters much needed flexibility to keep doing their excellent work supporting the projects (doing equally excellent work).

One thing I’m particularly grateful for (recently) is that the recent Eclipse Juno release has Java 7 as a reference platform.  I’m sure additional hardware contributions help everyone involved keep up with the pace of technology change.

Cheers!

Awesomesauce.  I just wanted to do a quick hat-tip to the folks at CloudBees for making it easy for their customers to do build and test using early builds of OpenJDK.  I’ve not dug deeper into their offering than Nicolas’ blog, but I do know that making is easier for people to try early runs of JDK 8 into their build and test environments is win-win-win.  Also good on the call out to the “Adopt OpenJDK” effort by LJC, SouJava, JavaBahia, Greenville JJUG and others!

- Don

A bit belated, but I’d just like to throw out my $0.02 of congratulations to everyone in the Eclipse ecosystem for another on-time release train.  It’s been said 1000 times, but bears repeating at least 1000 more — one of the keys to success of the Eclipse ecosystem is it’s predictability.  A new release train comes the last week of every June.  Service Releases come out predictably in September, and February — and repeat.  Tool chains relying on Eclipse can be assured that every June there will be a stable release to base upcoming product plans and scheduled upon.  It’s an important success criteria that can’t be overstated. 

Having worked at the Eclipse Foundation for almost 6 years, I can say achieving this goal is not trivial.  It requires a lot of feature management by the projects (a polite way of saying, features get deferred to the next train if there’s any doubt of making it).  It requires a lot of synchronization across project dependencies and lots and lots of milestones.  It requires an engaged ecosystem that’s banging away and testing up and downstream – and a feedback loop to pick up issues early.

So congrats to Eclipse and those in the ecosystem!

 - Don