Adobe just announced that it will open source Flex under the MPL license.

I find this quite funny since when Flex was initially released you had to go through a stringent selection process before you were even granted a free developer license. At that time they judged that Bla-bla List didn't meet the requirements and my plans to create an alternative open-source version in Flex as a comparison couldn't go through.

When people have been asking me about Flex at conferences, I've been saying that to be successful it will have to be open-sourced. It seems they eventually realized that nowadays this is a requirement for any development platform. Kudos to Adobe for that.

Sadly, this will now make it even more difficult for OpenLaszlo to defend its case. I still think that it's a superior solution since the programming language is much closer to what people are used to in Javascript development. Also, the fact that OpenLaszlo now supports multiple runtime environments such as DHTML and soon JavaME, is a major bonus. However, going up against the huge Adobe marketing machine will now be any even more difficult task.

The open-sourcing of Terracotta DSO has been one of the most exciting recent events in the Java world for me. With the help of their engineers I looked into making Terracotta work seamlessly with RIFE and more specifically RIFE's native Java continuations and its dynamic template system. This integration will soon be widely available, so stay tuned!

As I looked closer at the approaches of Terracotta, I realized that they come very close to what I've been striving for with RIFE:

• no serialization,
• reliance on Java language keywords to drive the core functionality,
• ease of configuration and
• non-intrusiveness

... and a lot of this is achieved through byte-code rewriting. I also was very excited to see that Terracotta took the open-source model seriously and wasn't just dumping their product on the world without properly following up. Public documentation is collaboratively being written for open-source usage and support through IRC and email has been top-notch. You can feel that everyone involved is very passionate and genuinely motivated to improve their product through the feedback of a larger community.

Native Java continuations fail-over and clustering has been one of the trickiest parts for RIFE users to date and I want to be part of developing the de-facto solution for POJO-based clustering. That's why I'm joining Terracotta as of April 2nd 2007.

Of course I'm still continuing to work on RIFE, to maintain solutions for Uwyn customers, and to talk about various Java-related subjects at conferences ... including Open Terracotta!

This took me a little bit longer that I'd hoped, I tried with awk first but finally settled on perl. Maybe this could be handy for someone else if you need to have the current IP address of eth0 isolated for shell scripting:

Could result into:

For years I've been telling people to not use MySQL, but to go for better open-source databases instead, like PostgreSQL.

The reasons have been many, from them not being an actual relational database until version 5, pestering people with crappy JDBC drivers version upgrades, ridiculous float and double support, and insisting on JDBC connections being closed after x hours of inactivity, ...

Finally it seems that MySQL has dug its own grave since they stopped making recent releases available as binary or source archives. Apparently, version 5.0.27 will be the last one that their own download section will provide and you'll have to rely on commercial support, vendors or linux distributions to ship newer versions. If you want to compile from source, it seems that you can still download that if you happen to know the 'secret location' of the FTP archive.

Anyway, people please, leave MySQL behind and move on to something more serious both in terms of database quality as well as in terms of fair practices. Even Oracle 10g XE now starts to look alluring since you at least exactly know what the limitations are. Personally, I still swear by PostgreSQL.

I thought I could do it, I thought I could use an Acer laptop with Linux for a while until the next generation of the Macbook Pro comes out. I tried, I really tried, but ... it's not a Mac. It doesn't run MacOSX, it doesn't run iWork nor iLife, I can't use Exposé, I can't use Omnigraffle, I can't use any of the tools I got to love during the past three years. Besides that, the screen on this Acer Ferrari 4005 is disappointing. Sure, it's not bad, but next to my 30" Apple screen, or even my old Powerbook G4, it's clearly of inferior quality. Finally, this Acer laptop is too heavy and its fan never shuts down. This means that I have to live with the faint background noise all the time.

So I gave in, despite my resolve to be sensible this time. I signed up for an ADC Select Membership and ordered a 2.16Ghz Macbook Pro with 2GB of RAM and a 7200rpm hard drive. I will be traveling a lot this year, and I don't want to be frustrated.

Now I'm regretting that I didn't do this a month ago because I will not have a Mac with me at TheServerSide Java Symposium. That will teach me, never try to be sensible about something that you know you'll give into anyway.

Now I just have to be patient for 5 weeks ... if anyone is interested in buying my Acer Ferrari 4005 with 2GB of RAM and warranty extension second hand, drop me a note.