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Java, the OLPC, and community responsibility
URL: David Pogue's OLPC review
At 2:47 PM on Oct 9, 2007, Rick Ross wrote:
Fresh Jobs for Developers Post a job opportunity
I couldn't help but marvel as I read and watched David Pogue's New York Times review of the "One Laptop Per Child" (OLPC) computer. The goal of the OLPC project is to develop a low-cost laptop that could revolutionize how we educate the world's children, especially in poverty-stricken, developing nations. No doubt there are legions of naysayers with compelling criticisms: the OLPC laptop is too expensive, too little ram, no hard drive, no CD, too slow, etc. Whatever your complaint, if you don't see the positive potential of this first effort you're missing the forest for the trees.
Read the rest of Rick's editorial and share your thoughts.
26 replies so far (
Post your own)
Re: Java, the OLPC, and community responsibility
It may be a good idea to try to get BlueJ running on OLPC once we get Java there. I should probably be pushing NetBeansRe: Java, the OLPC, and community responsibility
What a totally ridiculously cool project this is!> naysayers...
An energetic can-do attitude easily triumphs over the grumpy pessimists.
So how about a Java USB key - OJPC program? The community, including us, could come up with their own environment, with design tools, programming tools, drawing tools, all in Java. A J2EE server, Eclipse (lite), etc...
We can do better than Python, not?
btw, strange how the OLPC software just kind of materialized, out of nowhere. Quietly developed somewhere - I didn't see any noise in the open source world about any of the programming efforts for this thing. As a result, we're behind. There were ongoing sporadic reports about the hardware and the device as a whole, but no specific discussions about the programming challenges...?
~Mike
Re: Java, the OLPC, and community responsibility
As a former community leader for the java.net Embedded Java community, I tracked OLPC since its inception and I spent numerous hours thinking about what role Java and the Java community could play with OLPC. The obvious idea of getting Java on OLPC is not feasible at this time because of its hardware constraints. However, there are a number of non-obvious ways that the Java community can start participating with the OLPC initiative now and then increase its participation when the OLPC hardware evolves to the point where it can support a JVM.1) Offer Free Programming Classes To OLPC Users:
I like to think of Java developers as people who not only know Object Oriented programming, but who also have strong sub-OOP skills. I personally do not think that starting programming newbies with a OOP language is a good idea, but in a way, having a Java programmers teach sub-OOP languages to newbies is a good idea because they know how to present the material in a way that aligns it with the OOP paradigm. Here are some open source materials that teach programming from the ground up and they are ready to be used right now for offering free programming classes to OLPC users:
http://professorandpat.org
The programming series at this site uses a Java-based 6502 emulator that runs on the client, but it can be rewritten as a server-side application without too much effort. Also, the classes could be offered using JavaLobby's existing infrastructure. More advanced classes can then teach Java in a way that works around OLPCs limitations. The important thing is to form a relationship with OLPC users as soon as possible.
2) Provide A Java-Centric LiveCD That Turns Any PC Into An OLPC Support Server
A JVM cannot be placed on OLPC notebooks at this time, but OLPC notebooks still need support services and not all areas where OLPCs will be used have good Internet access. A Java-Centric LiveCD would allow almost any PC to be turned into a local OLPC support server which can offer a wide range of Java (and Linux) services to OLPC's over a local network.
Here is a Java-Centric LiveCD that I put together to support a vision like this that is ready to be used now:
https://jdos.dev.java.net/
http://206.21.94.60/jdos/
3) Provide Free Math Software To OLPC Users
All OLPC users need to learn mathematics and the Java community can help provide mathematics software to these users. My top choice for this is SAGE:
http://sagemath.org/
SAGE can be accessed from a browser which makes it ideal for use by OLPC users. The Java connection comes in because a Java client is currently being created for SAGE which will significantly increase its usability:
http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/tkosan/sageide/
SAGEIDE cannot be used on OLPC at this time, but if the Java community was successful in helping SAGE to become popular with OLPC users, I bet that SAGEIDE would help provide a good reason for why a JVM should be included in future OLPC versions.
Ted Kosan
tkosan@dev.java.net
Re: Java, the OLPC, and community responsibility
I think that is little to late for putting Java on OLPC, because they already start to ship OLPCs around the world. But I have another idea. Why not to built some simple framework based on GJC and some graphic library (maybe SWT). Programs would be simple compiled. With such tools like SwingWT even Swing programs can be translated to SWT.Gorazd
Re: Java, the OLPC, and community responsibility
From the official wiki (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Software_components):"Adobe's Flash Player and Java? virtual machine can be added via Yum or RPM install but are not part of the standard distribution."
Re: Java, the OLPC, and community responsibility
From the looks of it it's definitely possible to port some application to the OLPC.What's needed - in my opinion - are two things:
1/ Either a real OLPC per developer or a simulated environment that can run on other hardware (I believe this should do it: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OS_images_for_emulation )
2/ A project, idea, group of people, shared vision, ... .
I'm really wondering if Groovy could be ported to OLPC.
As long as there are still proprietary bits left over
... it won't be part of standard distributions.Sun and others are working on removing those encumbrancies, David Herron's blog has an overview, but it will take a bit of time, still. After that work is done, will we be able to push it into distribution cores, solving the first problem (dude, where is my jvm).
Solving the second problem (dude, where are my jars?) will take a bit of cooperation from either OSGi or JSR 277 with the distributions, and, most importantly, adoption of one of those two solutions.
GNU Classpath - Core Libraries
IRC: irc://irc.freenode.org/#classpath | irc://irc.freenode.org/#kaffe
Re: Java, the OLPC, and community responsibility
I hope every OLPC goes with some version of Java(even older version).OLPC Shell should be able to understand$java command.
This will allows us to avoid many headaches for future Java applications(without native code for ex:- Application Installer can be based on the available Java)
Upgrading can happen later.
If any OLPC Java project's needs a Java developer (with good Swing and Graphics2D experience) you can contact me.
I also know few freshers who trying to work on some Java projects, we can pull them in if needed.
Kishore.
http://gyanlabs.com/blog/
Re: Java, the OLPC, and community responsibility
Sorry for the silly question, but (legal issues apart) I can't understand where are the technical problems. Isn't the OLPC running an Intel CPU with a Linux o.s.? Why the standard JVM for Linux can't run on it?weblogs.java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici, www.tidalwave.it/blog
Member of the NetBeans Dream Team.
Re: Java, the OLPC, and community responsibility
It has no harddrive to install a JVM onRe: Java, the OLPC, and community responsibility
Well, but how other applications are installed?weblogs.java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici, www.tidalwave.it/blog
Member of the NetBeans Dream Team.
This has Consumer JVM written all over it
One of the big limitations mentioned in the OLPC Restricted Formats page (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/RestrictedFormats)was the fact that the JMV takes up 75 MB of disk space and consumes substantial memory. However, the Consumer JVM is supposed to be much slimmer in its disk footprint (2-4 MB?), though I can't speak to it's memory consumption.The Consumer JRE Project is at https://jdk6.dev.java.net/6uNea.html
and already has an Early Access Release available. There's no reason why this couldn't be used as a strawman in this situation. Download and installation instructions for Linux are on the Download page.
Cheers,
Jim
Houston JUG President
Technical Architect, ROME Corporation
Re: This has Consumer JVM written all over it
Ok, so it's a matter of size. I was also thinking about the Consumer VM that should fix this (of course, there should be a version that doesn't expand the JVM core too much otherwise the poor children would see the free room finished in a glimpse). Clearly this will reduce the number of Java applications that can run there.Thanks for making things more clear to me.
weblogs.java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici, www.tidalwave.it/blog
Member of the NetBeans Dream Team.
Re: This has Consumer JVM written all over it
> The Consumer JRE Project is at> https://jdk6.dev.java.net/6uNea.html
> and already has an Early Access Release available.
> There's no reason why this couldn't be used as a
> strawman in this situation. Download and
> installation instructions for Linux are on the
> Download page.
Attention, in my understanding the 6uNea doesn't have the Java Kernel stuff already developed, in facts the files to download are pretty heavy.
weblogs.java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici, www.tidalwave.it/blog
Member of the NetBeans Dream Team.