burek for breakfast

Next Gig: LinuxTag on May 23rd & 24th

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:20:15 GMT

I'll be speaking at LinuxTag in Berlin, Germany on JDK 7 Updates in OpenJDK. When I'm not speaking, I'll be mostly be around at the Oracle booth on Wednesday & Thursday.

See you there!

QotD: Donald Smith on Community Stars in OpenJDK

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:40:34 GMT

Luckily, we are getting help. The London Java Community has done a great job of pushing along information about how to do builds and providing very constructive and timely feedback on these topics. And there’s a developer from SAP named Volker Simonis who has done a fantastic job at documenting his own experiences building OpenJDK on a number of platforms. There are lots of stars in the community, but we’re always looking for more!

Donald Smith, Director of Product Management in the Java Platform Group at Oracle, in an interview for the latest edition of the Java Magazine.

OpenJDK 7u4 Source Code Bundle Published

Sat, 12 May 2012 11:51:56 GMT

As Edvard Wendelin announced on the jdk7u-dev mailing list, the source code bundle corresponding to the JDK 7 Updates jdk7u/jdk7u4 Mercurial forest is now available for download.

Happy packaging!

QotD: Linus Torvalds on GitHub Pull Requests

Sat, 12 May 2012 11:10:11 GMT

I don't do github pull requests.

github throws away all the relevant information, like having even a
valid email address for the person asking me to pull. The diffstat is
also deficient and useless.

Git comes with a nice pull-request generation module, but github
instead decided to replace it with their own totally inferior version.
As a result, I consider github useless for these kinds of things. It's
fine for *hosting*, but the pull requests and the online commit
editing, are just pure garbage.

Linus Torvalds commenting on a GitHub pull request to the Linux kernel.

QotD: Alan Bateman on Project Jigsaw Preview Builds

Thu, 10 May 2012 22:06:45 GMT

We now have a download page on java.net to host preview builds from Oracle:

http://jdk8.java.net/jigsaw/

This should be useful to those that want to try out Project Jigsaw and/or the current prototype of the modular JDK without needing to build it themselves.

Alan Bateman in a post to the jigsaw-dev mailing list.

QotD: Claus von Riegen on SAP & OpenJDK

Tue, 08 May 2012 21:20:11 GMT

When the SAP Java Virtual Machine team decided to join the OpenJDK project last year, they first of all wanted to understand the overall direction and governance structure of the project. After Volker Simonis and other team members contributed a few bug fixes and minor enhancements, they quickly observed that their contributions were not only welcomed, but that there are many similar interests among the different OpenJDK project members - the most important one being to protect the future of Java. What a bold statement ... in practice this means that through active participation and contribution from a broader group of participants, the work can be shared and innovation for the Java platform can jointly be defined by means of one standard implementation.

Based on this experience, SAP today decided to significantly incresae its contributions. Please read Volker Simonis' blog post on the OpenJDK mailing list about a new project proposal. We now plan to contribute whole platform ports in a belief that it is economically better to standardize our own implementation than to keep it proprietary. The first platform port that we are going to contribute is Linux on PowerPC. Based on that, we will work together with IBM and others and also use it as a basis for the AIX on PowerPC port. Depending on the outcome, other ports for other platforms might follow.

Claus von Riegen, Vice President Industry Standards and Open Source at SAP, in a blog post titled Protecting the future of Java.

Next Gig: JUG Karlsruhe on Wednesday, May 9th on JDK 7 Updates & JDK 8

Tue, 08 May 2012 21:10:46 GMT

I'll be speaking at JUG Karlsruhe on Wednesday, May 9th on JDK 7 Updates and JDK 8.

See you there!

PodFodder: Henrik Ståhl on 7u4

Fri, 04 May 2012 10:54:25 GMT

In the last episode of the Java Spotlight podcast, we interviewed Henrik Ståhl, Senior Director of Product Management in the Java Platform Group at Oracle on the latest release of Java SE 7.

As usual, you can grab just this episode or fetch the whole feed.

Seven By Default

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 22:02:15 GMT

On Java.com:

Java SE 7 Update 4 will be the first consumer release of the Java 7 JRE, scheduled to be made available as the default version on Java.com starting on May 1, 2012.

In Fedora 17:

Java 7 (OpenJDK7) is the default Java runtime and Java build tool set.

In Ubuntu 12.10:

Please note that OpenJDK 7 will become the default Java implementation in Ubuntu 12.10.

At Jelastic:

We decided to try something new. We made Java 7 the default choice this month and, as you can see, it made a huge difference in JVM popularity.

QotD: Ubuntu 12.04 Release Notes on OpenJDK 7

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:53:20 GMT

OpenJDK 7 (closely aligned to Oracle Java 7) is avaliable in Universe.
Please note that OpenJDK 7 will become the default Java implementation in Ubuntu 12.10.

Taken from the Precise Pangolin release notes.

Next Gig: JavaOne India on May 3rd & 4th in Hyderabad

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:36:51 GMT

I'll be speaking at JavaOne India next week in a couple of sessions.

See you there!

OpenJDK in The News: Oracle Releases Java SE 7 Update 4 and JavaFX 2.1

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:24:36 GMT

With the release of Java SE 7 Update 4, all of the performance enhancements available in Oracle JRockit have been merged into Oracle Java HotSpot and OpenJDK, the open source Java SE implementation.

The OpenJDK Community continues to host the development of Java SE 7 on Mac OS X and JDK 8, the prototype reference implementation of Java SE 8. Oracle has also started the OpenJFX project as part of its plan to open source the JavaFX platform.

Taken from an Oracle press release titled "Oracle Releases Java SE 7 Update 4 and JavaFX 2.1".

PodFodder: Donald Smith on OpenJDK

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 22:55:13 GMT

In the last episode of the Java Spotlight podcast, we interviewed Donald Smith, Director of Product Management for Oracle.

You can grab just this episode or fetch the whole feed.

Thank You: First 5000 @OpenJDK Followers

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 22:37:39 GMT

A little while ago, the OpenJDK twitter feed reached 5000 followers, about three months after reaching 4000 by the end of last year.

Thanks for following along on the journey towards JDK 8!

Next Gig: JavaOne Russia on April 17th & 18th in Moscow

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 07:20:25 GMT

I'll be speaking at JavaOne Russia next week.

See you there!

PotD: Debian popularity contest statistics for openjdk-6-jre and sun-java6-jre packages by vote

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 11:44:53 GMT

"vote is the number of people who use this package regularly".

QotD: Justin Kestelyn, Editor in Chief of Java Magazine on OpenJDK

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:07:58 GMT

Things have changed now. Java SE 7 is available, and Java SE 8 is on the way; Java developer conferences around the world are selling out in short order; Java skills are in high demand by recruiters; and the Java community is reinvigorated thanks to efforts including the OpenJDK project, the Adopt-a-JSR program, and—if I may be so bold—even this publication.

Justin Kestelyn, Editor in Chief of the Java Magazine, in the opening 'from the editor' article in the magazine's March/April edition.

Next Gig: Java SE 7: News & Features in Berlin on Friday, March 2nd

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:44:25 GMT

I'll be speaking on Java SE 7 at a free Oracle University event in Berlin on Friday, March 2nd, starting at about 10 AM.

See you there!

PodFodder: Alex Buckley on the Java Language and VM Specifications

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 01:26:45 GMT

In the last episode of the Java Spotlight podcast, we interviewed Alex Buckley, the Specification Lead for the Java Language and the Java Virtual Machine at Oracle.

You can grab just this episode or fetch the whole feed.

Next Gig: Oracle University Day – Java SE 7 in Zürich on February 24th

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:46:24 GMT

I'll be speaking at the Oracle University Day in Zürich on Java SE 7 on Friday, February 24th, starting at 10 am.

See you there!

Next Gig: Jfokus in Stockholm, Sweden on Tuesday, February 14th

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 23:14:49 GMT

I'll be speaking on Tuesday, February 14th at the Jfokus conference in Stockholm, Sweden on two occasions: a presentation on JDK 7 Updates & JDK 8, starting at 2 PM in room A2, and an OpenJDK Community BOF session starting at 7 PM in room C3.

Sandwiched in between is the live recording of the 69th Java Spotlight podcast, starting around 6 PM on the Spotlight Stage in the exhibition area.

See you there!

Next Gig: JDK 7 Updates in OpenJDK at FOSDEM in Brussels, Belgium on Saturday, February 4th

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:43:36 GMT

Edvard Wendelin and I will be speaking at the FOSDEM conference's Java Libre developer room about the JDK 7 Updates Project in OpenJDK in room K.4.401 starting at 11:30 AM.

See you there!

Movies: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:13:54 GMT

A highly enjoyable drama that feels like a prequel to Haneke's "Funny Games". In other words, as much as "La Pianiste" is a movie about love, so is "We Need to Talk About Kevin" a movie about parenthood - gone really, really bad. The script slices the story into many tiny fragments that quickly begin to make sense, and as minutes flow by and increasingly disturbing things start to happen, a lot is left to the imagination to fill in the gaps, and then dread the inevitable. You'll never see lychees again in the same way, thanks to the excellent acting from all leading characters.

Movies: Super 8

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 03:31:28 GMT

Sometime in the late 1970s, the Goonies help a bullet-resistant E.T. get back home while military trucks drive around through the holes in the plot. While the final credits scene is neat, the buildup is not - an extra long heavy weight train hits a small pickup truck, and in a poetically licensed take on the laws of physics, the train disintegrates sending cars exploding left and right through the landscape while the said pickup truck remains mostly intact, allowing its slightly bruised driver to spend some time lecturing some random, film-making kinds about the value of keeping stories about violations of the principles of thermodynamics to themselves. With a gun. If that sounds far fetched, the remainder of the movie includes the crash site attracting both reporters and major army presence, without the reporters to be ever heard of again as car engines, dogs and people disappear in the neighboring town next day or two. News of the weird must have travelled really slowly before twitter.

Movies: Margin Call

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:49:33 GMT

It is if someone read Taleb's "Black Swan" book and decided to write a Wall Street thriller based on it, with deeply cynical commentary on financial markets very liberally sprinkled around the script. And it actually works very well most of the time, without leaving many loose ends or resorting to cheating.