Proposal talk:Java applet support

The proposal will be altered, paying attention to comments that look reasonable.

Other related sites

This article has also been posted to Advogato at http://www.advogato.org/article/1017.html to discuss with the FOSS community. Who is interested, can follow the provided link to see the feedback there (feedbacks appear at the end of the article). There is also the Advogato project devoted to this idea.

Discussion also revealed some ideas how the browser security model can be modified to allow Java applets on community sites easier. These ideas are submitted to Sun as request 6898850.

Discussion here

History

Proposal talk:Java applet support/20 August 2009 - 2 November 2009

Summary of the history: Having applets open source, compiling on the server and reviewing the code should resolve the most of security issues that are not so big anyway. However applet ability to talk with the parent server needs a special care; better to place applets into separate domain. The good coding style should be to store applet text messages separately so they could be translated by non-programmers. It may not be possible to develop applets on some limited devices and some very limited (likely mobile) devices may even not be capable to run them. However applet development is possible on majority of recent computers and they should run on most of E-books, actually adding more value for them. Requirement to know programming will limit the number of people who can contribute writing applets; others will need to treat applets like images that may also have POV concerns. People from developing countries may not be ready to program but giving them serious possibility to apply programming skills can stimulate to learn. JavaScript is another serious alternative for Java applets; it deserves separate proposal and can be discussed separately. Applets can be introduced in a highly unobtrusive way, enabling them only through user preferences, but then some people may just not be aware that they could enable Java applets. It is important to know why do we need Java applets after all; the goal is to add more interactivity and this way increase the quality of the content. AudriusA 17:55, 2 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This summary of the prior discussion is, in my opinion, highly misrepresentative. A number of people expressed significant concerns related to this proposal which, at least in my view, were note adequately addressed. To have the primary proponent of this proposal bury these comments and replace them with a white-washed summary is offensive in the highest degree. I would encourage anyone here to look at and review the discussion page linked above. --Gmaxwell 14:01, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Some did, but hopefully you agree that not all. In the case of any doubts just read the discussion. It was sectioned purely because of technical reasons. AudriusA 22:57, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

New entries (please add new topics to the end)

OLPC

The Java page of One Laptop Per Child project actually looks good but from there it also looks that a lot of work can be done by people who would choose to contribute. In particular, the footprint of Java installation is much larger than it can be: archives are not compressed and it may include some tools that in the most cases would not be needed (CORBA tools, jar signer and so on). For applets we would only need runtime, compiler and zip archiver. People with some spare time may look for contributing possibilities there. However I do not think that applets on Wikipedia project should be tied strongly with OLPC decisions: hardware gets cheaper over time and any decisions based on disk space constraints are unlikely to persist for more than several years. The new version offers 1 GB of RAM - half of it was enough to build Java runtime, both system library and virtual machine, from the source in the past. And shipping of millions E-books seems showing that the most important may be to put teaching material and not just a software AudriusA 08:08, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OLPC Tivoization

Also, I recently realized that OLPC is tivoized when it is shipped for the mass usage (devices sold in developed countries are unlocked). While it may be reasons to do this, adding tools like java allow to combine tivoization with remaining capabilities of some real programming, as java classes from the view point of the operating system need not be treated as executables (if so configured). I am still not sure how big JavaScript program could be before it has performance issues on such a device. AudriusA 07:22, 31 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Long overdue

Wikipedia desperately needs the ability to post portable logic and animation. Java is the only way to deliver that securely. 24.179.163.72 23:23, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]