+1 Well written
Tim Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote: > Apache Harmony Board Report, December 2006 > ========================================== > > Issues requiring the Board's attention: none. > > Infrastructure > -------------- > We have now completed our second full month of TLP, and with the recent > creation of our Solaris Zone, we have no outstanding infrastructure > requests, and thank the ASF infrastructure team for helping us with our > transition from the Incubator. We plan on adding a few new mail lists, > one for our community-distributed build/test system alerts, and > eventually one for users. > > Development > ----------- > The project continues to make progress towards it's primary goal of a > complete implementation of Java SE 5. We have over 96% of the Java SE 5 > class library complete, and the virtual machine continues to make > substantial progress. We look forward to securing the JCK for Java SE 6 > to start integrating it into our build/test frameworks as to immediately > begin testing the portions of the classlibrary that we believe are spec > complete. > > While I can't quantify the VM as I can the class library in terms of > measurable completeness, it's clear we're making good progress due to > the continued improvements in stability, functionality and performance. > We also have quite a bit of progress in the area of documentation and > website, with a committed set of community members focused on that. > > In the last month we completed substantial work on our "JDK tools" part > of the project, which is the code and build infrastructure for the > additional programs that come with the runtime environment in the "Java > Development Kit" (aka JDK). As of now, we have a JDK that has "java" > (the runtime), "javac" (the Java language to bytecode compiler, based on > the Eclipse ECJ compiler), "javah" (C header and stub file generator), > and "keytool" (used for manipulating keys and certificates), and will > continue to work to complete the full toolchain. > > Security > -------- > Mid November, a user identified a potential vulnerability in the > codebase pertaining to a thread being able to mine values owned by other > threads in the so-called "ThreadLocal" storage. This was identified > on the private@ list, and after the PMC determined that there was no > real need continued discussion in secrecy, we moved the discussion to > the public list and resolved to everyone's satisfaction. > > Community > --------- > On the community front, things are fairly static. We are seeing a small > drop in our dev list participation numbers, but there are no known > reasons why, other than seasonal variability. > > In late November, Sun announced the creation of their open source Java > project called "OpenJDK". They will be releasing over the next 6 months > the source code to Java SE 6, under the GPLv2 and GPLv2+Classpath > Exception licenses. As of now, they have released their "javac" > Java-language-to-bytecode compiler and their VM to the community under > the GPLv2 license. Currently, they are still working out the details > regarding their community structure. We expect that this action will > have at least a short term affect on our community, simply because it's > a more advanced codebase, and an alternative community for people to > participate in. Overall, though, this is a positive thing for the open > source Java ecosystem, and we'll continue to look for ways to bridge the > two communities. > > One final community note - the Apache Gump project has been working > towards using Harmony as a "base" for their activities, and with the > recent completion of the "javac" compiler in Harmony, we're hoping that > we'll soon start seeing full Gump runs on the Harmony JDK. > > On behalf of the Apache Harmony Project, > > geir >
