OpenJFX initiative

[John-Val Rose]

Yes, well I'm sure there's a lot of truth to that as Johan has demonstrated.

But, I think it's a bit of an over simplification.

How do I know if *my* innovation (of say 9 months of effort) is "high-quality
code that makes OpenJFX better"?

I can do my best to write high-quality code but what exactly does "make
OpenJFX better" mean? *I* might think it's better with WebGL and advanced
3D features but it seems most people disagree or are ambivalent towards
such functionality.

Who gets to say what does or doesn't get integrated?  And, how do I know
*before* I potentially waste my effort whether it will or won't "make
OpenJFX better" or be integrated?

​​
Graciously,

John-Val Rose
Chief Scientist/Architect
Rosethorn Technology
Australia

On 23 September 2017 at 09:08, Nir Lisker <nlisker at gmail.com> wrote:

> > What do you mean by “go with Johan Vos’s experience”?
>
> What he said here: http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/openjfx-
> dev/2017-September/020801.html.
>
> On Sat, Sep 23, 2017 at 12:08 AM, John-Val Rose <johnvalrose at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> The concept of “innovation” no longer seems to apply to JavaFX, at least
>> not from Oracle’s perspective.
>>
>> If you read the official list of changes in the just-released Java 9, AWT
>> (yes, AWT) has more changes than JavaFX and even then the only significant
>> change is to make it Jigsaw compatible.
>>
>> A product like this needs a very clear “roadmap” of development and
>> introduction of new features but the link on the Oracle JavaFX
>> Documentation page for “roadmap” leads to a place known as “404”. I hope
>> that’s not a room number in “Hotel California”.
>>
>> So, innovation for JavaFX falls back as a community responsibility but is
>> very difficult without any cooperation from Oracle themselves.
>>
>> I personally have not been able to get any response from them except
>> “float your ideas on the mailing list to see what interest there is”. Note,
>> that “interest” is only from the community itself... and then what?
>>
>> What do you mean by “go with Johan Vos’s experience”? Yes, he and Gluon
>> are fantastic innovators and have built a small company of top-notch talent
>> and are able to crank-out new products and enhancements with impressive
>> frequency.
>>
>> Are you suggesting we all start similar companies? Johan is a former
>> Oracle employee and probably has a well-established relationship with them
>> and access to knowledge that others don’t. Personally, I love what he’s
>> doing and hope Gluon expands rapidly to enable as much innovation as
>> possible.
>>
>> But what about the rest of us? What are we supposed to do? How do we get
>> large-scale changes to happen?
>>
>> Well, I don’t know. But we’re better as a team than a bunch of
>> individuals each trying to get some feature implemented in an uncoordinated
>> fashion.
>>
>> The other real issue is that everyone seems to have their own perspective
>> on exactly what JavaFX is or should be. That makes the community
>> ineffective unless someone manages innovation for JavaFX in general.
>>
>> I’d be happy to be that person but sadly, it’s not for me to make that
>> call. Johan is like the de facto “Head of Innovation for JavaFX” at the
>> moment but he has his own agenda (mainly in the mobile space) and monetises
>> his efforts.
>>
>> That’s what businesses do.
>>
>> So, I think we need to firstly establish just what JavaFX is *now* (even
>> this is not clear) and also what it *should be* (where we coalesce
>> everyone’s own ideas) so we can move forward.
>>
>> That is of course *if* JavaFX is actually going to “move forward” rather
>> than “sideways”.
>>
>> Honestly though, if you’re not moving forward, you are really going
>> backward as you watch the rest of the world disappear over the horizon...
>>
>> Graciously,
>>
>> John-Val Rose
>>
>> > On 22 Sep 2017, at 22:38, Nir Lisker <nlisker at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > I didn't see any update on the idea for our initiative. Are we still
>> waiting for a reply from Oracle or do we go with Johan Vos's experience?
>> >
>> > I think that the least we can do without putting any work into this is
>> have a semi-formal list of people who would like to work on this  and a
>> list of what features we would be working on. I feel that I still don't
>> know the scope of what we are trying to do, only pieces of it.
>>
>
>