Blogging Roller

As of now, this site is running the very latest code from the roller_2.0 branch in the Apache Incubator's Subversion repository.

I also setup a new JSPWiki theme called roller2, which you can see on the Roller wiki, and a new Roller theme called roller2, which you can see on the Roller project blog. Both themes need a little work because it is not as easy as it should be to navigate around the site.

• InfoWorld: A Galaxy of opportunity
  "a sweet server that will surprise Sun's competitors and server shoppers alike"
• eWeek: Sun Debuts 'Galaxy' Servers
  "This is why Sun Microsystems Inc. brought Andrew Bechtolsheim back"
• eWeek: Bechtolsheim interview
  "Bechtolsheim touts power of the first Galaxy servers and says more models are on the way"
• CNET: Bechtolsheim's machine dreams
  "it's hard to make one x86 system stand out above the crowd"
• CNET: Galaxy remakes Sun's server strategy
  Fowler: "the fastest, most energy-efficient and reliable x86 servers in the industry"

The Netbeans guys want feedback on Netbeans 5.0, which is essentially feature-complete. Download it, give it a spin and let them know what you think. I'm downloading it right now.

Alejandro announces a new release of ROME (the Java-based feedparser that powers Roller's built-in aggregator) is available. ROME v0.7 BETA is primarily a bug fix release. Judging from the mailing-list, I'd say Atom 1.0 format support is probably coming in the next release.

When I found out about the big Roller installation inside IBM, I urged the IBM guys to move to Roller 1.0 and to help out with Roller development. Well now, looks like that's happening (tho they're probably going to skip straight to Roller 2.0). IBM blogger Elias Torres has been participating on the Roller list, submitting patches (for Apache Derby and IBM DB2 support) and showing great interest in further contributions. So, I just want to say: thanks Elias!

Wondering what's going on with Roller and Derby? Elias has submitted a couple of patches, but Derby support is not quite there yet. I think there's a pretty good chance we'll be able to work out the issues in the 2.0 timeframe. One of the reasons I upgraded Roller to use Hibernate3 yesterday (the 2.X to 3.0 migration was quite a pain, BTW) was to help Elias along. He may have to fine-tune Hibernate's Derby and he'd much rather do that with a modern version of Hibernate (we were on Hibernate 2.1.4 before).

Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine links to XULFaces, a JSF renderkit for XUL. So, can you really develop a webapp, switch renderkits and have it look like those screenshots? Gotta admit, that's pretty cool.

There have been a number of somewhat confusing announcements and threads regarding the open source licenses that are popular among Java developers: APL, LGPL, MPL and CDDL. Here's my take on a couple of those items.

Open office goes LGPL

The first announcement regards LGPL and SISSL. Sun has retired the SISSL and the Sun-sponsored Open Office project will be making all subsequent releases under the LGPL license. This doesn't mean that Sun is moving en masse to LGPL as at least one Java blogger seems to think. It just means that the OpenOffice folks decided that LGPL is the best license for their product.

JSF goes CDDL

The next announcement regards CDDL and JSF. Sun has released its Java ServerFaces implementation under the CDDL. Some Java sites covered this as news, but I don't think it is all that newsworthy. Sun had already released its J2EE implementation Glassfish under CDDL and J2EE now includes JSF, so most license savvy folks probably already assumed that JSF was under CDDL.

Apache and the LGPL

And finally, we come to the touchy topic of Apache and the LGPL. Apache is close to deciding a policy to define how LGPL components may be used in official Apache releases. Does this mean that Apache projects can now use and ship LGPL components. No, not yet. Cliff Schmidt announced the <a href= "http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/www-legal-discuss/200508.mbox/%3c96D75844-B15A-45E3-BF8D-5CF4517A09E2@apache.org%3e">proposed policy and that policy was to be voted on by the Apache board on Aug. 17, but I've heard no news of this.

In case you're wondering what this might mean to Roller, the proposed policy allowed Apache projects to depend on third-party LGPL components but not to ship them. For Roller, that would mean that we can keep on using Hibernate, but we'd have to ask people to download the Hibernate jars separately from Roller. That's unpleasant, but it's not too bad, I guess. If you read the email thread that Cliff's email started you'll see that some folks would like to allow Apache projects to ship third-party LGPL components, but not to have hard dependencies on them. For Roller, that's actually worse. We'd have to support an alternative non-Hibernate implementation of the Roller backend. We've been there and done that (i.e. supported both a Hibernate and Castor/JDO backend) and it was not an experience that I'd like to repeat. I wonder what happened in that Aug. 17 board meeting.

I'd also hoped to answer the question posed by Geert Bevin on The Server Side: What's the best developer-friendly open-source license for Java products, but that'll have to wait for a later post.

It's that time again folks. Come on down to Cafe Cyclo and join us. Josh has the details.

• FCC coordinaes Katrina tech aid
  "Lack of communications systems has been identified as a critical issue holding back aid, missing persons, law enforcement, etc. in crisis areas."
• Sun's helping
  "to construct Internet access points so those affected may access email, search for missing loved ones and connect with friends and relatives desperately awaiting news."
• Katrina.com
  Katrina turns her site into hurricane relief site
• Lie corrected
  The lie: "As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency"
• Homeland insecurity
  "devastating indictment of this department's performance"
• Bush's Katrina plan
  "to move the blame for the slow response to Louisiana state officials"
• FEMA "chief"
  Brown was "fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows."

As I promised at the start of the week, I've put together an easy to install "early access" build of Roller 2.0. The build is a standalone bundle that includes pre-configured Tomcat app server, HSQL-DB database and Roller packages. You should be able to get up and running by simply unzipping the package and running the startup script.

You can get the build here: roller20ea-demo.tar.gz

The purpose of this release is 1) to get feedback on the new Roller UI and group blogging features and 2) to allow folks to help out with testing. If you have feedback on the UI and new features, subscribe to the Roller user/dev list and discuss them with the Roller team. If you encounter bugs, please report them to Roller's JIRA issue tracker.

Here is the README that is included in the build:

ROLLER 2.0 EA DEMO RELEASE

This is a totally unofficial demo and test release of the Roller blog server 
software. Roller is currently in the incubator at Apache, but this release is
not sanctioned, approved or supported by Apache Software Foundation in any way.

If you have problems with this release, please contact Dave Johnson at 
(davidm.johnson at sun.com) and/or report bugs to Roller's JIRA issue tracking 
database at the following URL:

   [http://opensource2.atlassian.com/projects/roller]


INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS

1. Download roller20ea-demo.tar.gz from Java.Net

2. Unzip the file into a directory on your hard-drive 
   (directory name should have no spaces)

3. Ensure that the JAVA_HOME environment variable is set to point to your JDK

4. Ensure that CATALINA_HOME and CATALINA_HOME are NOT set in your environment

5. To start Roller, either:
- on Windows: open the Roller bin directory and double-click on startup.bat 
- on UNIX: cd to the Roller bin directory, chmod +x on all files, run ./startup.sh

6. Point your browser at http://localhost:8080/roller

7. Login as admin/admin, otto/otto or register as a new user

8. Get rollin'

BTW, I built the demo on my Solaris 10 box and tested it on Mac OS X 10.3.9 and Windows XP SP2.

One of the things that makes the Solaris X86 experience so pleasant is Blastwave.org. All the Solaris software I need, just a pkg-get install foo away (with the notable exception of Java goodies -- but that's another story). So I'm saddened to hear that the volunteers who run the site can't afford to keep it going. They're calling for help, so help them out! They need a big sponsor, but small donations will help was well. Save Blastwave!

Via Hoffie and Allen.

• Dell in the Bloghouse
  "your product was a lemon, and your customer service was appalling"
• Is Dell Dying?
  "Dell had the bad luck to tick off a very powerful blogger."
• Why weblogs?
  "Why would an enterprise choose to embrace the idea of blogging by its employees?"

One of the best ways to help the survivors is to donate to the American Red Cross.

<img style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px" src="http://rollerweblogger.org/resources/roller/redcross-180.gif" alt="Red Cross Logo" border="1" />

And don't forget to check with your employer. As Sun blogger Noel Franus points out, Sun Microsystems and other employers are matching employee donations.

I've been crazy busy on Roller 2.0 and unread emails and blog entries are piling up. Sorry if I haven't responded to you. I'm going to catch up tomorrow morning.

If you're waiting on Roller 2.0, here's the deal. The roller_2.0 branch is rapidly approaching stability, but there are still some rough spots and stack-traces lurking around the edges. Feature work is nearly complete and should wrap-up this week. I've been promising a snapshot build for the past month or so, but this time I mean it -- I will release a standalone demo/test build by the end of this week.

If you're wondering about RSS and Atom In Action, so am I. Writing is basically complete, except for chapter 8, which covers the Atom Protocol. The protocol list seems to be making progress, but it's going slow and it's looking like the next draft is going to be significantly different than the last.

That's all for now. Night all...

My Roller talk has been accepted for ApacheCon 2005, Dec. 10-14, 2005 in San Diego, CA. I'm planning to cover Roller features and architecture as a primer for new users and developers.

Bravo to Google Talk for using Jabber an open standard for instant messaging. Seems to work fine with GAIM. I'm 'snoopdave' if you want to say hi and verify that I am indeed connected.

• To blog or not to blog
  Sam Ruby and other locals in NandO article on employee blogging
• RSS mystifies most
  Blog readers "do not understand how RSS works"
• US gov in DRM?
  "Schwartz said that he believed the federal government should be involved in DRM standards."
• Open source DRM
  Sun is releasing its code from Project DReaM (DRM/everywhere available) under [CDDL]
• Jonathan on DRM
  "You'd have to start by proving I've stolen something"
• DTrace and Ruby
  "Rich Lowe has made available a prototype Ruby DTrace provider."

<img src="http://static.flickr.com/25/57149823_ebbe19cae5.jpg" alt="" style="border: solid 2px #000000;" />
Rockin' the house
Originally uploaded by fieldmouse.

Fieldmouse took some good shots of The Connells show at Mission Valley saturday night. I was there. It was hot and muggy as hell, but after a somewhat shakey start, sound-wise, the guys put on a great show.

Simon Phipps: Today in 2005 we've reached a milestone. Sun's stated direction is to use an open source model for all its software, and it's become necessary to have a formal co-ordination point for all this activity. So today Sun created a new "Open Source Office" (OSO) to act as the meeting-point for all its open source activities. It's not the first time we've had full-time staff devoted to the care and nurture of open source activity - my good friend Danese Cooper did this for several years before her recent job switch, for example - but having a cross-functional, cross-Sun Open Source Office with a Chief Open Source Officer at its helm is new. I'm thrilled to have the chance to play that role.

I'm thrilled too. Congrats Simon!

Rafe Colburn: I don't know about you, but I'm much more like to port my PHP applications to Ruby on Rails than my Java applications.

To me, Ruby is a lot like C#. Not in terms of syntax or language features, but as a pleasant improvement over what was there before. See, if I ever have to do any Windows programming again, I'll be thankful for C# and .Net. They're a great improvement over C++/MFC and Visual Basic. And likewise, if I ever have to work in the world of the scripty web P languages, I'll be thankful there's Ruby. It looks like an improvement as well. And like C#, Ruby looks pretty easy to learn.