Semi-OT Rexx on Palm OS rant - Re: [Ibm-netrexx] Cell phone programming

[Fernando Cassia-2]

Chip,

True computer geeks like us (I?m making assumptions about you, as you
already notice) love simple, tight code, I guess. And Palm OS is one
example... :)

I was dismayed when I saw Sony drop the ball and give the PDA market
to Microsoft?s WinCE devices on a silver platter. I own several PDAs
running PalmOS, from my original USR Palm Pilot II using AAA batteries
(best design ever), and including one Sony Clie NX80V (would have been
the iPhone killer, if it just had a GSM radio on it :) but the
SonyEricsson folks didn?t want another Sony division producing
phones... -, a Garmin PalmOS GPS unit and a WristPDA wristwatch
running, guess what, PalmOS. :)

IBM?s J9 JVM for Palm OS is nice (try installing the GMail Java app I
linked in my earlier post in your Centro... beats using the lame
Blazer web browser and the html interface), but sadly IBM stopped its
development.

By mid-2008 Sun requested volunteers to port Phone ME (the Java Mobile
Edition, Open Source ed.) to PalmOS, but then by late-2008 everything
got stuck because they freaked out after realizing PalmOS has no
native threads. Well, gee, IBM?s J9 manages to run on PalmOS so they
must have figured a way, no?.

See the full thread.
http://forums.java.net/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=284276&tstart=0

I?m sure that if IBM contributed their approach to get threads working
on PalmOS (from the IBM J9 VM) the effort could be resurrected. Palm
sold over 2M Centro units in the first year and a half of sales, and
there?s tons of Treos 650, 680, and 755p still out there...

And to return back to the list topic, and speaking of PalmOS
devices... if I dig on my email archives of circa y2k hard enough, I?m
sure I could find an e-mail to Mike Cowlishaw telling him IBM should
port Rexx to Palm OS...

In the 32-bit OS/2 golden years (1992-1996), IBM was referred as the
"dancing elephant". Now I think it?s the half-frozen elephant...
Seeing so much great technology go down the drain (can you say IBM IC
Phone, one of the first and better sounding internet phones, produced
by the IBM Haifa labs in Israel) is sickening. Viavoice for Linux,
anyone?. I could go on, don?t get me started...

And what?s worst of it all, is that nobody has the leadership or guts
to say "instead of letting this die, we?re going to open source it so
that it can continue living on". The only thing of interest IBM has
ever open sourced is JFS and ORexx. Pretty lame if you compare it to
all of Sun?s GPL?ed code.

Best,
FC
Buenos Aires, Argentina

PS: I used to love ARexx on the Amiga platform. I bragged to every
IBMer that would listen that OS/2 should have incorporated the idea of
"ARexx ports" for inter-aplication automation, but did they listen?
no... It was all this experience with propietary software going down
the drain that made me a true believer in Free Software (of the GPL
kind).

On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 2:38 AM, Chip Davis <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Fernando,
>
> I too have been dismayed at the lack of success of the Palm OS. ?I've had a
> Palm device since the beginning, in the form of an IBM WorkPad. ?Eventually,
> I got tired of having to carry around two electronic devices and now have a
> Centro running Palm OS Garnet v.5.4.9, and I LOVE it.
>
> Amazingly, it still runs Jaxo's Classic Rexx interpreter (4.01, 13 Dec
> 2002)!
>
> The only downside is that I have it on the AT&T system, and all those damn
> iPhones are sucking all the bandwidth out of the network. ?(That, and I
> really miss Graffiti.)
>
> I would be very interested in any possibility to run NetRexx on the Centro,
> and any pointers to the Java-accessible Centro toolkit.
>
> -Chip-
>
> On 2/17/10 23:30 Fernando Cassia said:
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 9:39 AM, David Requena <[hidden email]
>> <mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
>>
>> ? ?I spent once some time researching applicability of NetRexx on J2ME.
>> ? ?Had no good results but then this was on CLCD 1.0's prime time. Now
>> ? ?J2ME seems to be on its way down.
>>
>> Yes, CLCD 1.0 sucked. But hey, that was nearly ten years ago.
>>
>> Have used Java ME recently? It?s great. I use it all the time on my PalmOS
>> Centro Smartphone (despite IBM, sue me), to run Google?s GMail Mobile app
>> v1.5, and also Opera Mini...
>>
>> http://www.wlanbook.com/google-gmail-app-treo-650/
>> http://www.opera.com/mini/
>>
>> FC
>>
>>
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[Fernando Cassia-2]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 3:04 AM, Fernando Cassia <[hidden email]> wrote:

> See the full thread.
> http://forums.java.net/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=284276&tstart=0
>
> I´m sure that if IBM contributed their approach to get threads working
> on PalmOS (from how they did it with the IBM J9 VM) the effort could be resurrected. Palm
> sold over 2M Centro units in the first year and a half of sales, and the phone is still being
> offered on-line, and there´s tons of Treos 650, 680, and 755p still out there...

Speaking of fighting for lost causes...

Back to topic, Rexx.... someone let me know last year that he ported
Regina Rexx
http://forums.neurostechnology.com/index.php?topic=10201.msg53973#msg53973
to the Neuros OSD Linux based Video Recorder...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000HXGIHE?ie=UTF8&tag=showitem06-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000HXGIHE

But the unit still lacks java so no use for Netrexx. The only ARM
based device with a Java VM that I know was the HomePod Mp3/networked
media player. It included IBM's J9.

Wouldn't it be in IBM's own best interests to have the J9 VM open
sourced under a  dual license (say GPL/MPL) allowing for commercial
use and mixing with proprietary software?.

That would mean that IBM could still charge manufacturers whom want
the IBM J9 VM licensed with support etc, and at the same time the
"Free Software" advocates/enthusiasts would still run the J9 VM and
port it to other devices that it has not reached yet...

Plus, they could release as open source only the linux-based version,
leaving the Windows Mobile one closed and up for sale as is now...

Anyone in this list knows anyone at the IBM J9 team?. Just curious...
FC

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[David Requena]

IIRC IBM's J9 VM implemented so called 'green threads' on the palm
platform. Here the jvm was managing simulated threads within the vm.
To the developer this was no different to true native threads except in
that you could not have running threads when your midlet was in the
background.

It's been a least some 3 years since I last worked on the platform (Treo
650) so, please, take above statements with a grain of salt.

---
Saludos / Kind regards.
David Requena


El 19/02/2010 10:24, Fernando Cassia escribió:
> I´m sure that if IBM contributed their approach to get threads working
> >  on PalmOS (from how they did it with the IBM J9 VM) the effort could be resurrected. Palm
> >  
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[Fernando Cassia-2]

On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 8:05 AM, David Requena <[hidden email]> wrote:

IIRC IBM's J9 VM implemented so called 'green threads' on the palm platform. Here the jvm was managing simulated threads within the vm.
To the developer this was no different to true native threads except in that you could not have running threads when your midlet was in the background.

It's been a least some 3 years since I last worked on the platform (Treo 650) so, please, take above statements with a grain of salt.

---
Saludos / Kind regards.
David Requena

Thanks David.

yes, to the Java application there was no change and the JVM faked real threads. The point is... the developers were trying to port Sun´s open source Java VM code which expected a unix - linux host OS and native threads in the OS.

So how to fake "green threads" on a OS that doesn´t have them is the key question. If there is a GPL - Open Source implementation of green threads for OSs that do not support them, that would help them complete the port. If not, well, that´s why the effort got nowhere.

FC

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[David Requena]

Fernando,

I wouldn't know. This is pretty low level stuff which I'm not familiar with.
I just happen to use what we had available at the time but I just wanted to confirm that yes,
some kind of multi threading existed on the palm/java platform.
 

El 19/02/2010 12:36, Fernando Cassia escribió:

On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 8:05 AM, David Requena <[hidden email]> wrote:

IIRC IBM's J9 VM implemented so called 'green threads' on the palm platform. Here the jvm was managing simulated threads within the vm.
To the developer this was no different to true native threads except in that you could not have running threads when your midlet was in the background.

It's been a least some 3 years since I last worked on the platform (Treo 650) so, please, take above statements with a grain of salt.

---
Saludos / Kind regards.
David Requena

Thanks David.

yes, to the Java application there was no change and the JVM faked real threads. The point is... the developers were trying to port Sun´s open source Java VM code which expected a unix - linux host OS and native threads in the OS.

So how to fake "green threads" on a OS that doesn´t have them is the key question. If there is a GPL - Open Source implementation of green threads for OSs that do not support them, that would help them complete the port. If not, well, that´s why the effort got nowhere.

FC

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