Everyone else has gotten their two cents in, so I had better too. I think Project Harmony as proposed is a good thing.
Novell won't back Java[1]. Redhat won't ship Mono. So where does this leave open source?
I think a lot of the current interest in open source didn't come from "Linux" per se, but tools such as Apache and Perl. They were free of cost. They fit with the needs of users. They filled the needs of users better than commercial equivalents, and it was clear that a commercial clone of either would fail.
Apache is still "The number one HTTP server on the Internet"[2], but I think open source is losing the language war. It's been years since exciting things were really happening that commercial software wasn't doing better.
C and C++ are dead languages[3], but they continue to be the foundation of most of the free software out there. The effort that's going into supporting that system of libraries is wasted, because the programmers of today don't really want to talk to you if you don't have garbage collection. They don't want to talk to you if you have a language as complicated as C++[4]. They don't want to talk to you if you can't make DOM and SAX XML models talk to each other. They don't want to talk to you if you can't tell them straight to their face which HTTP client code to use, or which interface specification to code to when they want to write a serverlet. We're playing silly buggers with ideas that should be dead to computer science, and the commercial players are lightyears ahead in delivering actual user functionality.
Perl's CPAN was a killer app when C++ was big. If you wanted an implementation of a particular feature you just picked it up. Now-a-days most such features are part of the standard library of your langauge. Why would you want another source? That's what we're missing.
We're still arguing about which languages we need to use to build core desktop components on! Heavens' sakes! When a programmer opens up the open source toolkit for the first time we can't give them an adequte place to start.
You could code in C, but that's like using punchcards for getting user functions in place. You could code in C++, but that's far too complicated. It won't give you access to basic functionality, nor will it provide an upgrade path for when the next big thing does arrive. Also, if you're not coding in C you have to think very hard about how your code will be reused. Chances are, if it's not in C you can forget about it... but if you do use C you'll spend the rest of your life writing and maintaining bindings for every language under the sun.
We used to be able to solve all our problems with the open source tools we had, but they were smaller problems back then and the productivity we demanded from ourselves was less. Now its hard to know where to start when implementing something as simple as an accounting system.
There are many reasons to get behind Mono. It has the makings of a great piece of technology for delivering user functions. Unfortunately, it has the legal stink surrounding it that comes from being a clone of commerical software from an company that makes money off IP lawyering. It seems that Java is currently unencumbered. Despite Sun's recent cosyness with Microsoft, they seem to be good citizens for now.
From my perspective we either have to pick one of the two horses, or invent a new language again. If we pick that third option we'd better be ready to make it fill needs that can't be filled by the current solutions, or it simply won't be swallowed. If we can't pick Mono, then Java has to be our launching point. Once we have a useful Java platform, then we can think about whether we want to stick with Java longer term or whether we want to fork in the same way Microsoft forked to create C#. Any way we go its a technical and legal minefield out there and we don't really have a 500 pound gorilla to clear the way for us.
I suppose I had better clearly state my position on python, perl and friends going forwards. To be frank I don't hold out much hope. Parrot seems to be stagnant. It has been "in the early phases of its implementation" for as long as I can recall, having had its 0.1 release in December 2001. Without a common virtual machine, I don't see Perl and Python talking to each other freely any time soon. If that virtual machine doesn't also run the code in your mythical compiler-checked uber-language replacement for C# and Java then they won't talk to each other at the library level either. As far as I am concerned it is the the lack of ability to write a library and know it will be able to be used everywhere its needed that is at the core of what I hate about working with open source tools right now. I don't care how easy it is to write in your personal favourite langauge, or how elegant it is. I just want to know whether I'll be spending the rest of my life writing and rewriting it just to end up with the same amount of funcationlity I started with. It's just as frustrating from the library user perspective, too. I'm forever looking at libraries and thinking "I need that functionaliy, I wonder if its available in a python binding?"[5]. I don't care how easy such a binding would be to create. I don't want to maintain it! The code's author probably doesn't want to maintain it either! There has to be a better way!
So... what's left?
I think we end up with three options for making open source software authoring bearable again:
- Pick a language, and have everyone use it
- Pick a calling convention (including contracts regarding garbage collection, mutability and the like), and have everyone use it
- Start from scratch and find another way for pieces of software to communicate with each other (such as http over the local desktop), and have everyone use it.
Given these options, I applaud project Harmony for making the attempt at positioning us with a reasonable starting point. I hope they succeed. Organisationlly, I trust Apache more than GNU with their existing classpath infrastructure to do the job and get it right. Apache have a lot of Java experience, and that includes dealing with through Java Community Process with Sun and other Java interests. On the technical level they seem to be taking a bigger-picture approach than classpath, also. I think they can get a wider base of people onto the same page than the Simultaneously, I think we should continue experimenting with alternative ways for software to communicate. Maybe we'll meet in the middle somewhere.
Benjamin
[1] Ok, that's a huge oversimplification
[2] Accoring to their website
[3] ... or dead langauges walking, on their way to the electric chair
[4] As a C++ programmer I thank the Java luminaries for removing features like operator override!
[5] I consider python the most productive language presently for writing software in the open source sphere. I don't think its a good language once you hit a few thousand lines of code... I need compile-time checks to function as a programmer.