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Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2005 20:33:31 -0200
From: Rodrigo Kumpera <kumpera@gmail.com>
To: harmony-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: half-baked idea? j2me
In-Reply-To: <43669468.4090205@dedasys.com>
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References: <43669468.4090205@dedasys.com>

AFAIK IKVM, sablevm and jamvm all run on portable devices.

Developing a j2me jvm is not as easier as it seens, first, the
footprint and execution performance must be really optimized, so
expect a LOT of assembly coding.

After that, a jvm that runs in no device is pretty much useless, then
we would need to test in the many devices we would support. Developing
for a smartphone platform, like Symbian, BREW or Nokia Series 60
(Symbian based) would make it easier, but not easy.

But I cannot say that the idea is bad, as the j2me implementations out
there are really bad comparing to the j2se offerings. Maybe with a
FOSS jvm that is pretty solid, many vendors would stop bundling buggy
software and more convergence of optional capabilities and bugs would
happen.

I'm just not sure that such project would fit the Harmony proposal, as
the idea is to implement a j2se compatible jvm.


On 10/31/05, David N. Welton <davidw@dedasys.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm interested in having a freely available Java system, which seemed as
> good a reason as any to start lurking on this list lately.
>
> I've been mulling over what I've seen in the archives here, what I know
> of the free java world, free software, communities, marketing, and
> various and sundry other things and an idea popped into my head.
> Perhaps, like many others, it's a dumb one, but I thought I'd lob it out
> there just the same:
>
> Why not start out with j2me?
>
> *) It'd be breaking new ground - something no one has done before in the
> 'free' world (to my knowledge at least).  That, to me at least, would
> increase the fun quotient.
>
> *) It's small, which would make it easier to get running - or at least
> easier to make it complete.
>
> *) It's simple.  To my knowledge, in order to stay small, most
> implementations are interpreters (possibly assisted in hardware through
> things like Jazelle).
>
> *) Modulo space saving optimizations, it could then be used as a launch
> pad for "bigger and better things" should we so desire.
>
> *) Perhaps there are some financial incentives for corporations to get
> involved.  J2SE is "free beer", so the impetus to work on a free version
> mostly comes from a desire to have an open source Java available,
> without the practical incentives of a free beer system that other open
> source projects have had working in their favor.
>
> Just a thought...
> --
> David N. Welton
> - http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/
>
> Linux, Open Source Consulting
> - http://www.dedasys.com/
>