Cheiron news

Public release of Seven 0.1.1 - September 4, 2006

The first public release of Seven implementing JSC v0.1 is available for download under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2). Seven eases the development and deployment of Jini™ services and provides features such as:

manage service registration with various lookup services;
support for distributed events, leasing and participation in the two-phase commit protocol;
administration interfaces for life-cycle and join management to a service;
simple persistence API that can be used e.g. to capture transactional state;
finding and tracking other services in the djinn;
resource management such as allocating threads and leased resources;
resource effeciency by employing various tactics to reduce the number of threads used by many of the Jini implementation classes;
service configuration, like the RMI runtime, (distributed) security, logging and configuration of objects used by the service itself;
controlling codebase annotation and serving download jar files, as well as versioning of services and downloadable code;
standardized packaging format (Service Archive) for Jini services, see JSC Service Repository;
installation and upgrade of a service and container.

Also part of the Seven project is the Seven Suite v0.1.1 which provides an out-of-the-box experience for Jini™ and is especially targeted at newbies for the Jini™ Technology/Seven. It contains the following components:

standalone Seven with Lookup Service implementation installed and configured;
standalone Jini Service Browser with ServiceUI support;
suite specific material such as:
- Transaction Manager and JavaSpaces service as SAR file;
- pre-built example services as SAR files;
- Ant and various Ant extensions to ease the development of Jini services;
- binary code for JSC Platform, other standardized Jini utilities, ServiceUI and Cheiron Utils;
- source code for examples;
- source code for Seven, JSC Lookup Service, JSC Transaction Manager Service, JSC JavaSpace and the JSC Platform for the purpose of debugging and troubleshooting;
- Installation and Developer Guide, contains information about configuration of Seven;
- Javadoc for the JSC Platform and other relevant libraries that are distributed as part of this suite.

Relicensing announcement - April 8, 2005

Virgil management approved a proposal in which all Cheiron projects will be relicensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2). This move is a direct consequence of the applaud shift of Sun Microsystems to change the licensing conditions for the Jini™ Technology from the Jini SCSL to the ALv2.

In 2002 a general BSD license without the advertising clause, known as the Cheiron BSD License, was chosen for the Cheiron Project, however due to the Jini SCSL we decided to use a dual licensing strategy (BSD/Jini SCSL), known as the Cheiron Dual License. As a strong advocate of the ALv2 for the Jini Technology in public discussions with the Jini team of Sun Microsystems we felt it our obligation to follow them in their move.

We believe the ALv2 is based on the the same spirit as the BSD license and satisfies the following requirements:

acceptance as a commonly used and open source license
language not too complex, but also not too simple/vague
applicability for both code and specifications
to include by reference
clear patent language

Due to dependencies on other products that are currently licensed under the Jini SCSL there is no exact date when the transition of the Cheiron projects to the ALv2 will be completed, but we hope soon after the Jini Technology Starter Kit 2.1 is released by Sun.

This relicensing announcement must be seen as an underlining of the objectives of the Cheiron Project and the strong support of Virgil for Open Source.

JSC API 0.1 final available - September 13, 2004

The JSC API v0.1 is declared final given the limited number of changes lately and the demand for a stable API by JSC Service developers, the distribution can be downloaded from: http://www.cheiron.org/jsc/

From now on all fixes to the current API will enter the main branch that ultimately should result in v0.2 which we don't expect to be stable before Q2 CY2005. The set goals for v0.2 are:

clarifications
persistence support for leases, events and transaction participants
security related enhancements
correction of conceptual flaws

It is not expected JSC API v0.2 will contain major new functionality. We do expect that v0.2 will introduce incompatible changes, however we try our best to keep them to a minimum.

New Cheiron logo and Look & Feel - September 2, 2003

The Cheiron website has finally received an official logo and a brand new Look & Feel. This event also marks the beginning of more frequent updates to the website than one has experienced in the past.

While a preview of Seven has been postponed to Q4 CY2003, we assure the community there is still a strong commitment to provide a real out-of-the-box experience for Jini™. The JSC API has stabilized the last year based on feedback of many developers that have used internal releases of Seven.

Cheiron went public - November 1, 2002

The Cheiron website is officially open to the general public.

Start of Cheiron - January 16, 2002

Virgil management authorized the setup of this site and Open Sourcing of the the Jini™ Service Container.