Since the last report the Harmony community have published two new milestones, 5.0 Milestone 15 and 6.0 Milestone 3, and are currently in code freeze in preparation for new milestones of both branches. These milestones are bug fixes to existing functionality as there is no significant new functionality being worked on in the project at the moment. The ongoing issues around Apache Harmony's TCK license have had a negative impact on the project's development progress, since it is deemed most unlikely now that the project will be able to achieve our original goal. The majority of developers were working on Harmony code with a view to achieving a fully compliant and compatible implementation of the Java specifications. Some developers have asked to be removed from the project, and some have gone inactive. Although we have received support from the Foundation for making a release of the current code, the Harmony PMC and discussion on the dev list has focused on the potential for adoption of such a runtime release; summarized best in the quote from Harmony's dev list "[releasing a non-compliant runtime] misses the important point that no matter how safe we, the ASF, think we are there is no point making releases that no one (with more to lose?) would risk using." This is reinforced by the Oracle vs. Google case which serves as a notable indication of the potential risk to other consumers. While other diverse points of view certainly exist, it would appear at present that nobody is stepping forward to develop and release a non-certified implementation of the specifications. Until somebody comes forward with a specific proposal to take the code in a new direction no options will be ruled out. On a more positive note, a number of new developers have posted to the dev list and a community member posted details of his success running Apache Hadoop on Apache Harmony! We believe that Apache Harmony has implemented all the requirements of the Foundation branding guidelines. |