Jikes Open Source – a report from Dave Shields

I was a participant in a conference call with Bruce Perens
yesterday, along with an IBM manager and attorney. In the words of
diplomacy, “It was a frank and open exchange”. We discussed Bruce’s
concerns about the Jikes License and also the question first raised
by the Debian group about releasing the source for the Jikes Parser
Generator.

At the end of the call, Bruce said he would prepare a report on
the call and submit it to
slashdot. [ Link added by Linux Today – lt ed ] He
graciously offered to send us a preliminary copy for our review. We
declined, as we trusted his judgment. We also said we would not
write our own report, lest confusion result from two reports trying
to relay the same news.

I apologize for the delay in setting up the Jikes mailing lists,
and I appreciate the support of slashdot and LinuxToday in posting
my notes on their sites, so I could honor my pledge to have all
discussions in “full public view”.

I ordered a new 6 gig disk for the server machine (100 Mhz
Pentium, 32MB memory) a few weeks ago. I had two 1 gig disks. A
colleague suggested I should wait for new disk to arrive, as what I
had might not suffice to manage the mail lists. The disk arrived
yesterday morning. I had a lot of meetings that day, but did find
the time to install the disk and did a fresh install of RedHat
5.2.

I’ve asked for some help in setting up the system. Though I’ve
used Unix for almost two decades, I’ve hardly ever had the
opportunity to log in as root. Indeed, I’m still such a newbie in
this area that when I log in as root I still feel a rush — it’s
like sitting in a Ferrari and putting the pedal to the metal. Away
we go!

Unfortunately, I have proven very adept at doing a great deal of
ecological damage to a pristine Linux landscape in a short time. My
specialty is reducing /etc/aliases to rubble — think of the
oft-shown TV footage of an old building being demolished by a few
pounds of dynamite.

I’ve asked for help doing things right, and hope it will arrive
soon. If not, I’ll steam on and promise to be more careful. I will
make a best effort to be able to accept subscriptions early next
week.

I drive my daughter Jennifer to school every morning. Ever since
the start of the school year, she’s been the object of a constant
flood of news and concerns about releasing the Jikes source code.
She has always been a rapt listener; indeed, I boasted to a friend
recently that my daughter was “THE world export in open
source licensing issues in the 14-and-under age category”.

We both share the same birthday — December 8. My favorite
present was a set of six Jikes Coupons. Here is the text of a Jikes
Coupon:

Jikes Coupon

Value: 10 Minutes

This coupon entitles David Shields to 10 free minutes of
Jennifer’s undivided attention to talk about Jikes or whatever he
sees fit. During this time, Jennifer may not think or say in any
way, “Oh, gosh, here he goes again.” Even phrases such as, “We’re
playing with the big boys” will be tolerated with a pleasant nod
and smile.

I realized that I had mistaken a pleasant node and smile for
keen interest and concern. However, I have learned a valuable
lesson and it forms the basis of my new policy when asked about
open source licensing issues.

While I had a role in drafting the Jikes License, now that it is
out it has become the responsibility of the IBM attorneys, and only
they have the authority to effect changes to it. My making
statements about it, especially misdirected efforts to interpret
it, can only lead to confusion. So from now on, when asked to speak
about these matters my response will be silent and simple — a
pleasant nod and a smile.

I have great confidence in our attorneys. I know they want to do
the right thing. I have found them to be quite pleasant, and have
even seen them smile from time to time.

I know that all fellow members of the slashdot community join me
in congratulating Rob Malda on completing the work for his
undergraduate degree. Sengan informs me Rob is getting a B.S. in
Computer Science, and also a B.A. (or perhaps minor) in the Arts. I
regret that I do not know the name of his college. I know he is
eager to resume hacking.

We posted the source for Jikes at 1PM EST on Monday, December
7th. I received an e-mail the same day 9:13 PM from Vadim Zaliva
(lord@crocodile.org) that included a patch file. He also posted the
patch in the “Discussion Area” for Jikes Source at the alphaworks
site.

Philippe is on vacation, and I didn’t get a chance to speak to
him after we published the source until late Wednesday afternoon.
He asked me if I had seen the patch at alphaworks. I said I had
gotten an e-mail but hadn’t had time to look at. He said he was
“flabbergasted”. Though the patch contains only a few lines, it
shows a good understanding of much of the compiler structure. I
view this as our first success story, and I am sure there are more
to come; I view it as a joint tribute to Philippe’s design and
Vadim’s demonstrated skills.

At the end of the call, we had the following exchange:

Philippe: Dave, this guy is good. Think he could come
work with us?

Dave: Philippe, he already is working with us
— and for free!

I asked Philippe to report in full on the technical knowledge
displayed, but he has some personal business, and I have gone ahead
here, as I did not want to delay recognizing Vadim’s work. We are
pleased to welcome him aboard as the first contributor to join our
project since we released the source (there are other contributors
I wish to name for work done before we released the source, and
I’ll try to provide details on our web site early next week).

It’s hard to express a “pleasant nod and a smile” over the
internet. It’s also hard to express a hand shake. My daughter Jen
designed a great masthead for the Jikes web site using a masthead
design tool built by Chet Murthy and others (Chet is the guy who
used to do the libc5 builds — I told him he had done his last
build late last week). Unfortunately, IBM requires a uniform
look-and-feel on its web pages, and I am not able to use her work,
though I will put up a copy elsewhere on the Jikes web site soon,
and am enclosing a copy of it along with this note, and hope that
slashdot and LinuxToday can find a way to display it as a sign of
welcome — both to Vadim and to all the future contributors that I
expect to meet soon via the Jikes mail lists.

dave

shields@watson.ibm.com http://www.ibm.com/research/jikes