Project Proposal: JFX

[Mario Torre]

Il giorno 28/ott/2011, alle ore 20:43, Richard Bair ha scritto:
> Hi,
> 
>>> I see it as being the same as with OpenJDK, in that:
>>> - The entire project will be buildable and runnable and usable on free 
>> software
>> 
>> Good goal.
>> 
>> I have a question regarding applets and webstart. Is the plan to keep those bits 
>> of code closed? If Oracle is releasing the code for JFX, it seems strange to 
>> think that keeping the deployment code closed would offer Oracle a competitive 
>> advantage.
>> 
>> This affects the deployment story of JFX.
> 
> Adam mentioned at JavaOne (I don't remember the context) that plugin will go open source too. I don't have a timeline for that, though it is really a question for JDK as opposed to JavaFX.
> 
>>> - We are likely to have some encumbrances that require a closed module for 
>> the time being for the binaries
>>> that we ship of JavaFX, for the sake of performance and such (e.g. T2K for 
>> fonts)
>>> - We will continue to work hard to replace those bits with free code
>> 
>> I hope that this is true for JFX, but OpenJDK has a mixed track record in this 
>> respect. Replacements were provided, but I don't see a strong and consistent 
>> push from Oracle to make the replacements as good as or better than the closed 
>> versions.
> 
> Really we want to get away from the binary non-free parts, but in some cases it requires a very large investment to get the free versions up to the level of the non-free ones. Believe me, I'd drop ductus tomorrow if open Pisces was ready to replace it.
> 
> Cheers
> Richard


Hi Richard,

We as a "Community" can help with that, see what Danis is doing or example with Pisces.

I think those are all solvable problems giving some guidance, especially important since this code in this area is sometime not documented at all, sometime very hard to read, and sometime just magic ;) and definitely code that falls in an area that doesn't have many expert around the globe that can contribute effective code (but most of them are in this mailing list and involved in this thread!).

As for the plugin, during the pass years many nice things had been contributed, like CacioWeb or the amazing job Deepak is doing with the IcedTea plugin. That ultimately boils down to your internal policies and the relationship you have with your customers of course, but I believe that very good quality alternatives are already there and are cost effective, really.

Ductus seems vey good and in some cases better than Pisces, but I have used OpenJDK and the closed JDK for years now, on both Linux and Windows (and now Mac) environments, I believe that the free replacement is catching up quickly, with the additional benefit of long term maintainability that the binary equivalent doesn't have. Ultimately is more a cost for you to maintain ductus than collaborate with us to improve Pisces :)

Anyway, things are getting better and better every day, to be honest, I'm very impressed to see how well Oracle is doing despite being a very slow start, and I'm very happy people like Phil and Jim and the many 2D/Swing devs are around (just to speak about that specific area of course), since they are extremely helpful and collaborative all the time.

Now you only need to remove that clickthrough stuff I was mentioning in an earlier mail and we'll take care to make OpenJavaFX shine ;)

Cheers,
Mario
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