Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 16:10:56 -0700 From: Bill Huey <billh@gnuppy.monkey.org> To: freebsd-java@freebsd.org Cc: Bill Huey <billh@gnuppy.monkey.org> Subject: Re: A Call to Action for freebsd-java... Message-ID: <20020625231056.GB2374@gnuppy.monkey.org>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
[forgot to CC it to the main list --billh] On Tue, Jun 25, 2002 at 02:54:18PM -0500, John Utz wrote: > As i mentioned in an earlier post, we where blessed with a visit > from a Sun Java guy (Charles Ditzel) courtesy of our local sun reseller > person. we have lotsa good stuff that we bought from him (the reseller, > not charles ) during the closing part of the glory VC days. Na, lay off the guy. I'm probably more directly connect to the Sun JVM folks in a luny technical capacity than anybody here on this list and this is mainly because I'm not shy about asking him questions. I know Calvin Austin and the rest of the folks responsible for the upcoming J2SE 1.5 release, etc... Greg for licensing, etc... > I thanked him on behalf of the list for the support that sun has > provided up to now ( good suggestion dave! ). I told him that i was > running 1.3.1p5 pretty flawlessly on FreeBSD and i explained to him that > the port didnt have hotspot running yet. Which has been pretty much nothing at this time on their end as far as raw dedicated engineers go, but they have provided the license which is a good thing. Sun's a wierd place, I have access to high level folks to ask technical support questions, but their political structure doesn't seem to recognize the BSDs as significant enough to actively support using engineering resources. It could be the case that it's too much for them to handle given the economic times. I certainly understand that. But the task of porting the entire JVM itself is pretty much localized to the OS port group in question and you really can't get around those issues (our pthreads bugs, etc...), so Sun can be of limited help to us anyways. It's pretty much our show whether we like it or not. > I explained to him further that FreeBSD was going to have some > challenges moving to 1.4 because of the disappearance of 'classic' mode in > 1.4 and that we could really use some direct contact with Sun Engineers to > help with HotSpot. No need to worry any more. The buzz is starting to spread around that HotSpot is working under FreeBSD now. ;) > He was aware of the fact that M$FT has been working in the BSD > realm and he was interested in facilitating communication between the GBSD > community and the Sun Java developers. How ? what part of the political and corporate structure is he working with ? This is critical if you want to liason between both groups. He might be inappropriate to pressure about these things in the same way that I don't pressure Calvin's group. > So, I would imagine that if we get our heads together and try and > figure out exactly what it is that we would want from him we would > probably meet with some success. > > The key point being that we need to create a request that contains > specific action items that he can > > 1. understand immediately so that he can work on the *problem*, not on > trying to figure out what we want. We need engineers (roughly 1-2) at Sun to focus on the next release for FreeBSD and interface with the BSD community about issues related to it. It's got to be professional much like the Blackdown community. Also, joining the blackdown folks isn't a bad idea either. "News" In that regard, I'm trying to transition out of JVM development and move into more traditional FreeBSD kernel side stuff, so we need a person that's capable of doing the work I've done and maintaining it across JVM revisions. I've already begun the process of leaving it to other folks in our group and refocusing my development effort to KSEs and SMPng. > 2. solve easily by putting us in contact with the person at sun who can > help. We've already got that. Tell him what I just told you about our (greg, nate, me) contact with them already. > If we meet these goals, then we help ourselves by helping him to do his > developer outreach job effectively. > > I can imagine that being able to write in his self evaluation form for his > salary review 'I helped the FreeBSD Community complete it's port of jdk > 1.4.x, thereby expanding the reach of java to X100,000 new machines' would > make him feel very happy indeed. > > I am happy to write the letter, or i am happy to let ernst or greg or bill > nate or freebsd-core write it. i dont care. i just want this to help > because i this is a key strategic issue for freebsd. It's better for the core engineering folks to deal with the Sun folk directly or else it might create some confusion just from having too many people poke into the the mix. The FreeBSD community is pretty inexperienced with interfacing with corporations overall and it's best to let folks that understand the politics behind it deal with the interpersonal and managerial tasks instead. Barraging a random Sun person about these issues isn't really something productive, which possibly might lead to a cascade of rumors within Sun making our job more difficult. It's best to back off unless you know what you're doing. Certainly chatting with him about what's been going on recently is a good thing. bill To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-java" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20020625231056.GB2374>