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Turbulent Java times

janhoy — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 08:49:07 +0000

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?

The Solr distros are coming

janhoy — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 19:40:10 +0000

Open Source Search is gaining more and more traction. First you had Lucene (2001), giving great search for programmers. Then we got Solr (2006) making search accessible for non programmers, but a certain level of expertise is still needed. And then came Constellio, an open source (GPL) enterprise search distribution (distro) built on Solr, adding a slick GUI, connector and crawling support and more.

Say again. A Solr distro?

I call it “distro” because I like to compare the evolution to what we have seen in GNU/Linux. First there was the Linux core. Then there was the GNU tools that made Linux so much more usable but still only for engineers comfortable with the command line. And last, companies like RedHat and Suse built complete distros including modern GUI, ready-to use tools such as OpenOffice, Thunderbird and more. Without these distros, Linux would just have been a “core” leaving to the user to add the extra sugar.

I dare state that the same is about to happen with Open Source Search. There are many companies out there already with their own proprietary Apache Solr/Lucene based ”distro”, but Constellio is the first open-source one I have seen so far.

As a Solr user, you’ll feel at home within ./constellio/tomcat/webapps/constellio/WEB-INF/solrcores/ where you’ll find the regular schema, solrconfig etc. But I do suspect that any manual edits here will be overwritten by the GUI…

Tapping into Google Search Appliance

The creators of Constellio have done a pretty good job in this first 1.0 release. Easy installation, nice administration GUI, easy to get started crawling, etc. And they have been bold enough to tap into Google’s open-sourced GSA connectors available at Google Code as opposed to using ManifoldCF from Apache or another connector framework. They also hook in to Google OneBox APIs, thus enabling users to plug in to all the smart search “widgets” that can for instance intercept the query, and if it detects a stock ticker, deliver a stock price graph on top of search results. Nifty! I bet Google didn’t anticipate their connector framework being used outside of the GSA…

So what’s the catch?

Well, for one, it is GPL (v3), meaning that it excludes some potential users right away (unless they are able to dual license?). You have to register on the site in order to download, meaning you’ll probably be contacted at some point in time by sales – no big deal. It is open source and the source code is available, but it is not developed by a community in an open way. You can download the source as a zip, but if you change it, who’s gonna maintain your changes? Probably yourself…

Luckily there is no limits on number of documents you can index or the QPS rate. Thus it is a true free (as in free beer) solution, which cannot be said about the weak MS search server Express or the old and maxdoc-limited Omnifind Yahoo! edition. Being free™ may be enough reason to give value to many users who would otherwise have to pay consultants to bring up a solution from scratch based on the individual components.

Constellio’s business model is to live from support and consulting fees, and that may very well work. But I cannot see how they will be able to create a true open community around their product, and for that reason I believe it will be a distro without very large adoption.

Quirks

It is obviously an early version 1.0. If it was an ASF project it would probably have version number 0.x. A few quirks: The logo upload did not work. It identified my Norwegian web pages as Danish, and it crashed on me (see screen shots). But good luck to the creators with making this into a mature Solr distro.

Screen shots

Constellio search page

Constellio collection admin

Constellio - edit collection

Constellio - server management tab

Constellio - connectors management

Constellio - edit field types in GUI

Constellio - configuring a field type with analysis

Constellio - hey, it's only version 1.0

Can Oracle stop Java from opening up?

janhoy — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 10:25:57 +0000

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.

Test driving Chrome OS

janhoy — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:58:41 +0000

After all the buzz about Chrome OS being open-sourced as “Chromium OS”, I had to give it a ride.

I could have compiled the source from scratch, but a quick search gave this page from Gdgt providing a VMWare image of a complete install of Chrome OS. So I created a new virtual machine in VMWare Fusion on my MacBook, selected “Other Linux 2.6.x kernel” as OS type and poited it to the .vmdk disk image. See Figure 1 for how that looks.

Figure 1: VMWare Fusion with Chrome OS VM

After powering on the VM, it virtually took only 8 seconds for it to boot into the login screen. Here you fill in a valid Google login, e.g. a GMail address:

Then wait another 9 seconds for the Chrome browser to show up, already logged in to your GMail account. Nice. Everything in Chrome OS are web apps, and the Chrome browser shows App tabs differently than normal web page tabs. This is a nice and clean idea. Signing in to an OS with a web-based user name and password feels strange, but hey, it just works! And if you’re without internet connection, you can still sign in with an account that you’ve used before!

From here, browsing works like normal. You can create tabs, windows, switch between windows with Alt-TAB etc. In the upper righthand corner are some icons which provides you with some menus for battery status, WiFi and network connection and a general menu with access to options etc.

I was unable to test WiFi since my VMWare only provides ethernet to the local OS. I also tried to start the leftmost tab which is supposed to be a quick-launch for Web Apps, but it requires a @google.com account which I don’t have, so I don’t know how to do that:

Glitches

This being an early pre-release of the OS one year before the launch of the first public version, no wonder there are some way to go still. Here are some of the minor issues I found

Not possible to change locale in login screen. U.S. keyboard layout is default., which means Norwegians need to search for the @ key and others.
Loggin in to a “Google Apps for Domains” account, auto-login to mail and calendar gets lost.
The quick-launch tab to the left does not let me login with a GMail account…
The whole thing just freezes sometimes Could be due to VMWare?

Here are a few articles I found useful

Google competes with iTunes

janhoy — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:22:12 +0000

Google has just integrated music search, called “Google Discover Music“, into its search results – in US only so far. Partnering up with imeem, lala, myspace (iLike), Pandora, Rhapsody as well as the major music record labels, Google is striving to help users find and listen to music in just a few clicks. As much as 2 out of the top-10 searches are music related, which really suggests that many people are looking for music at Google.

So why leave Apple’s iTunes out in the cold? This is of course part of a battle of online digital music. Although some were guessing that Google were planning its own music service, partnering up with and helping the most innovative services out there may be a just as efficient move, if they manage to get people used to search for music in Google instead of through iTunes. Yes, some of these services let you purchase music as well as listen online.

I could not find any info on when this service is expected to Norway, if ever. I guess that would be with other partners since Rhapsody for one is U.S. only But we surely welcome all competition in this space, as the industry gets used to better models and cheaper music for us consumers.

Solr being used by Google’s allforgood.org

janhoy — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:11:52 +0000

Google runs a web page called AllForGood which helps people find opportunities to volunteer in various organizations in their neighbourhood. In the beginning, the search in the site was updated from Google’s crawlers crawling several volunteer webpages.

However, when designing a tighter integrated, more real-time search, they turned to Apache Solr. On their blog they say

“…our search engine is now powered by SOLR, an incredible open source project that will allow us to provide higher quality and more up-to-date opportunities.”

What a super testimony for Solr’s strenths and maturity!