Contributing The SableVM Virtual Machine To The Harmony Project

Hi all!

I have been in informal discussions, lately, with the Harmony project,
an "incubation" project of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF).  If you
have not heard of it, the Harmony project is an effort to create an
independent implementation of J2SE 5 under the Apache License and to
create a community-developed modular runtime architecture.  Here is the
project's URL:

 http://incubator.apache.org/harmony/index.html

The Harmony project is rapidly gaining visibility, and has been
receiving significant software donations from major industry players and
individuals, the most important being:
 - IBM: core Java library classes and VM/library interface
 - Intel: security, cryptography, javax.net and unit tests
 - Archie Cobbs: JCVM
 - Daniel Lydickto: Bootstrap JVM

I think that it would be in the best interest of the SableVM project to
participate to the Harmony project by adding our virtual machine body of
code to the pool of existing Harmony code, so that it could be mixed and
matched with the code of other virtual machines to create something
bigger than all its parts.  The Harmony project would provide a leveling
playing filed for various VM developers to start working together,
instead of wasting their efforts on separate individual VM implementations.

Given the high quality of previous donations accepted by the Harmony
project, I think that it would be an honor for our code to be accepted
by their project.  But, in order to do so, two things must happen:

a) I must get the permission of all copyright holders to "donate" the
   code (more details later about this), and

b) The Harmony project must accept the donation.  I will only propose
   such a donation officially if I get the permission of copyright
   holders to do so.

A few technicalities.  The Harmony project does not require "Copyright
Assignment"; it merely asks for the copyright holders to do 2 things:

1- License the code under the Apache License 2.0 (a very permissive
   license):
    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

2- Execute a Software Grant (which is a license to allow the ASF to do,
   more/less, whatever it wants with the code):
    http://www.apache.org/licenses/software-grant.txt

So, in simple terms: you would still retain your copyright on the code
you wrote, but you would lose any control on the "donated" copy.

Also, contributing the SableVM code base to Harmony would not mean the
end of the SableVM project, far from that!  It would simply lead to the
following development model:

1- The day to day maintenance of the general usage virtual machine
   would be happen within the Harmony project.

2- The SableVM code repository would keep a synchronized copy of the
   Harmony trunk as a root for developing new features and doing
   research, and for development in sandboxes.

Personally, I am quite excited at the opportunities.

So, what do you think?


Regards,

Etienne

-- 
Etienne M. Gagnon, Ph.D.            http://www.info2.uqam.ca/~egagnon/
SableVM:                                       http://www.sablevm.org/
SableCC:                                       http://www.sablecc.org/

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