Math project or subproject

[Joseph D. Darcy]

Alan Eliasen wrote:

[snip]
>
>    I'm the submitter of these patches [BigInteger] which are almost 
> two years old in a couple of weeks, with still no approval.  And these 
> multiplication patches are only a small part of the work that needs to 
> be done on BigInteger.  I also have orders-of-magnitude improvements 
> for pow() and toString(), both of which use extremely slow 
> algorithms.  I was asked to make patches as small as possible so they 
> could be reviewed quickly, so my submitted patches have just been for 
> multiplication.

Sun Microsystems Inc. is in the last throes of the process of ceasing to 
exist as an independent entity.  This was preceded by many years of 
marginal financial performance of the company.  Neither condition 
enhanced the ability of those of us working at Sun to make progress on 
OpenJDK, including making progress on infrastructure to collaborate more 
effectively with developers in the external community.

>
>    Joe Darcy, what is your current status on reviewing these patches? 
> Can you delegate this to Dmitry or Xiaobin if you don't appear to have 
> time to do it?

I'd like to review your patches by the end of March 2010.

[snip]

>
>    I think OpenJDK *contributors* need some evidence that their 
> contributions are being looked at, or they'll stop contributing, 
> and/or move to other platforms with better numerics.  Some of us have 
> spent literally weeks of unpaid work improving performance, getting 
> world-class outside reviewers to look over them and reduce Sun's 
> workload, etc.  It's very depressing to wait over two years for 
> approval of a well-known algorithm that is usually assigned as a 
> homework assignment in undergrad courses.

I again apologize for the increasingly tardy reviews of your work.  If 
it is any consolation, I have my own projects, including fun ones, which 
have been deferred for months and sometimes years.  I'm confident your 
contribution will be a fine addition to the millions and millions of 
lines of code already freely available in OpenJDK.

-Joe