The Apache way of developing open source software relies on an active community of users, contributors and developers. All of us can contribute in some way or another. Being a committer means that you participate actively in the software development work and have write access to the source code repository. Each project is lead by a the PMC (Project Management Committee) which consists of some of the committers taking an extra responsibility of staking out the future of the project. (more…)

Times have been turbulent in the Java camp since Oracle took over Sun, trying to make Java a less open specification. Well, now the Apache Software Foundation has made real their promise to leave the JCP EC if Oracle continued its ego-play with Java, not listening to the community.

But what’s the future now for Java and as importantly all the Open Source projects based on Java? much will depend on Oracle’s own actions in the next months. Personally I hope that their bullying around will start to hurt so much in their brand perception and customer satisfaction polls, that they desperately see the need for a new Open Source strategy, cooperating with the developers instead of fighting them.

However, by the time Ellison & co lands on this decision, I fear that it will already be too late to unify Java. The majority of the Java development community including Google and hopefully IBM, will have laid out a plan to revive the Java comminity on their own.

In his very interesting blog post “The case for a new Apache/Google “Java”“, Sola plays with one scenario where a new Java-like programming language based on Harmony takes over the whole eco-system, and that ASF deprecates the Java versions of all projects. Wow, drastic move but it could maybe work?

There is an exciting war going on about the future openness of the Java platform. Oracle is trying to capitalize on its ownership/stewardship of Java, by starting to charge for their enterprise version of the JVM, as well as stopping its competitors like Google to succeed with Java. Oracle wants to make Java more closed for their own economical benefit – an act which just hurts the community, users, developers and Oracle’s own customers.

The latest move is by the Apache Software Foundation, whose Apache licensed “Harmony” implementation of the JVM is being banned by Oracle because they want OpenJDK to be the only open implementation of Java (obviously to make sure there is a reason to purchase JRockit from Oracle and to keep control). Apache this week threatens to leave the JCP (Java Community Process) if Oracle does not grant the Harmony project it’s legal right to the TCK.

Personally I cheer for Apache and hope the other JCP members will back the claim, and with the help of Google (and hopefully IBM) eventually see a true open model for the stewardship of Java, including an Apache licensed JVM for anyone to use freely. At the end of the day that will give Java a huge boost and attract more developers.

Cominvent is the first company in Scandinavia to offer professional classroom training for the Open Source search engine Apache Solr. Last week we conducted a training in Denmark, and we plan for a regular schedule in Oslo and on-demand elsewhere in Europe.

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The open source search server Solr from Apache Foundation has become a mature technology ready for prime-time.

The recent editions has added features which previously were only found in commercial offerings, such as

• Automatic replication for large installations with distributed search
• Java-API (SolrJ)
• Conversion of Office-documents
• Full faceted search
• Advanced tokenization, highlighting and stemming

Apache Solr is being adopted more widely, and some companies even start replacing their expensive commercial engine with Solr with good results. In that way they can spend less on licenses and more on content quality and tuning.

Feeling ready to try Solr? Contact us for a talk, or download it yourself and try the tutorial. Here’s a short video introducing you to the basics:

I will soon write about how to obtain professional support for Apache Solr.