On 5/17/22 08:33, Stephen Smoogen wrote: > On Mon, 16 May 2022 at 23:18, Neal Gompa <ngompa13@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> On Mon, May 16, 2022 at 9:54 PM Andrew Hughes <gnu.andrew@xxxxxxxxxx> >> wrote: >>> >>> On 19:36 Tue 10 May , Florian Weimer wrote: >>>> * Vitaly Zaitsev via devel: >>>> >>>>> On 10/05/2022 15:29, Ben Cotton wrote: >> >>> Also, my sympathy for this argument is a little short, given the >>> number of times we've released OpenJDK updates for Fedora on unembargo >>> date, only for them to sit waiting for karma. Recently, we even had >>> one security update usurped by a later regression fix because it still >>> hadn't gone stable in over a week. Let's not pretend that Fedora has >>> every security issue fixed as soon as the unembargo lifts. >>> >> >> I don't know if you're going to gain any sympathy for stating this, >> considering how badly the Fedora Java ecosystem has fallen apart in >> the span of five years. Both in the wider Red Hat world and within >> Fedora itself, Java has received less and less love, to the point that >> it has been brutally starved. It has gotten so bad that Debian (!!!) >> beat us to newer Java and we had to *beg* for this to be fixed. So >> much for Features and First, eh? >> >> Once, long ago, we were the leader in the Linux Java ecosystem, but >> ironically as Red Hat's influence in OpenJDK grew, investment in >> Fedora dwindled. > > > I am pretty sure that was a very very tiny period of time of 2 to 3 years. > Over the 25 years I have worked on RHL and then Fedora.. we have nearly > always been a far follower on Java. For a good period of time from > 2004->2012, there were regular flaming mailing threads about "Java in > Fedora sucks", "Java only wants exceptions to standard policies", "Fedora's > java is broken on X". It took a LOT of work to get Java into a 'working > state' but it is like 'welding' plastic to steel.. You constantly find > yourself remelting parts or adding more glue until what you have is more > 'stuff which keeps them stuck together' versus 'tools which work'. > > The investment when it was done back then was done by volunteers (they > might have been @redhat.com but they weren't doing it as their main tasks) > who frankly one after another burned out over the toxic reaction they got. > [That said it was a two way street of toxic reactions...] For the last 7 > years, there has been a dwindling number of people who basically got mostly > 'this is bull$hit, fix it the way I want it' reactions from Fedora > community members. For some reason, various people in the community have > assumed that Red Hat pays people to work on Fedora primarily and Java > secondary which was never the case. If I understand correctly, the main problem with the Java ecosystem is that it is based on redistribution of binaries, not source code. The focus is on building binaries that can be run on as many systems as possible, rather than on providing source code that users compile themselves. This makes a huge amount of sense in the enterprise software world, but is diametrically opposed to the open source distribution model. Nowadays, the problem of redistributing Linux binaries is solved via containers (including Flatpak/Snap/AppImage/etc), but those both predate Java and are not useful for those targeting Windows (as many enterprise projects do). The result is a culture clash. Rebuilding from source isn’t a matter of reusing the upstream release tarball or Cargo/pip/etc package, but of finding whatever VCS commit upstream used and building that manually. OpenJDK is designed to produce native images that can be redistributed, rather than be a system-wide installation that other software depends on. Packaging Java software for any distribution (not just Fedora) means going against the grain of various upstreams, and that is a significant amount of work. That said, I don’t think the answer is “give up”. A much better approach would be for the work to be shared between Fedora, Debian, and other distributions. I believe that this is both doable and necessary. This isn’t specific to Java, by the way. JavaScript has similar problems, and I believe .NET does as well. In the case of JavaScript, the problem is hidden by the heavy use of transpilers, which result in the shipping of JavaScript that isn’t actually source code (in the sense of “preferred form for making modifications”). >> So tell me, if we actually *did* this, what are *you* planning to do >> to make open source Java more attractive? What are you going to do to >> > > Why is this their job to do that? They, like N% of Fedora packagers, are > volunteers who just have @redhat.com addresses. They have limited time, > resources and ability to keep the packages in Fedora. They, like many other > volunteers, are finding that 'free' time is getting smaller, and are trying > to come up with ways to keep it in. > > If other people want it to be promoted and attractive, they need to do the > marketing work to do so. The alternatives I am seeing here are: > > 1. This is done this way (if the build system will even allow that without > more horrible hacks). > 2. OpenJDK is taken out and a different external repo is given a nod like > the ones we do for flatpak and such. > 3. OpenJDK is taken out, and the various new people step up and put in a > IcedTea replacement that 'mostly' works and deals with the trademark > issues, and the marketing to get it seen and used. > > Staying the same is not an option and is off the table. I would be fine with either dropping TCK certification or only certifying a subset of the packages. Fedora users almost certainly do not need it, and the trademark problems can be worked around. AdoptOpenJDK did so a while back, so there is precedent. -- Sincerely, Demi Marie Obenour (she/her/hers) _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
