Re: Jini vs/and OSGi

Niclas Hedhman wrote:
> Sorry for jumping in late, but I have been out of commission for long...
>
>
> It is with tears[1] in my eyes I read this thread. The misconceptions on both
> sides are large, and I even here disrespect among some fellows here for OSGi.
> And this "impedance mismatch" between understanding each other will probably
> lead to perpetual separation, exempt Newton and similar rebels.

Niclas,

I must say I'm somewhat surprised by your view of this thread. If I read
the thread back I don't see any camps and you make it look like some
OSGi bashing took place. Ok, every person has its own style of writing,
but I think most of the people agreed they are complementary (although I
added that the combination may not be without its problems).

Given the fact I've done the only public comments on the merit of the
approach in the paper referred to, as well as the problems I see in
portability of Jini services as OSGi bundles (like I did 9 months ago) I
feel the need to comment here.

> The OSGi community's main complaint about Jini is the "undefined classloading
> model". The security complaint from OSGi towards Jini is probably moot at the
> advent of 2.0.
>
> AFAIU, the Jini community's main complaint about OSGi is the attempt
> at "remoteness transparency".

The remarks were with regard to this particular paper and as I said in
my posting I don't know in which direction the enterprise working group
is thinking.

> So both camps close the door and throw dirt at the other side's door. Bad!

As far as I'm concerned there is no closing of doors, but I also don't
see the (personal) need to try to educate them in particular or to treat
them differently then J2EE e.g. or any other platform.

The thing is that in essence Jini (and I'm not talking about the JTSK)
only describes how services are exposed to the network (through Java
interfaces) and defines the basic required infrastructure and concepts.
The great thing was that as such it could be the friend of every
platform, container, etc, etc. built on top of Java, if and only if they
all could agree about the basic infrastructure to be there (and then it
helps to be part of J2SE). A long time ago there was a grand idea that
the foundation for this infrastructure would be brought to J2SE and you
through JSR 76 and 78 and we know what happened with them
(http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/results?id=325 and
http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/results?id=328).

I have nothing against other platforms, technologies, or ideas. When it
is the right solution for the given problem I will use them too, but I
don't see why one can't have any criticism on a given approach and then
(as a result) you have to spend effort and time in educating the masses
or that you are seen as hostile against it, or being part of a camp.

Personally I would love to see the ability to write Jini services as
part of a J2EE container, OSGi Platform, fill in a name and to consume
it as client from any other platform because that was the whole
magical idea behind Jini. I've been arguing for a long time in this
community for that interoperability specification, given my constant
referral to a Jini Platform and presentations such
http://www.cheiron.org/misc/jcm/jcm8.pdf, but so far I don't have the
feeling that there is much enthusiasm for it. Many feel that their
"Jini" is confined to their LAN and as such they can control a lot of
things and don't care much about other "Jini"s. As such the stars seems
not very well aligned, do I want that to be different YES, but maybe I'm
carrying to much baggage with me for these kind of changes.

> hmmmm... Is there any will? Or just the will to criticize, feeling proud
> and "they don't get it"??

Niclas it requires a very strong spinal cord these days to feel proud
and to publicly admit you are using Jini, as it was in the past, so I
just don't understand this last remark.
--
Mark

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