What are com.blah or org.blah?

[Tor Iver Wilhelmsen]

Has anyone come up with any good alternatives for Java developers
without any domain names to call home?

Just use whatever you deem unique for you. The use of the domain name
is a convention, not enforced in any way, but is the package naming
convention least likely to generate collisions when someone else uses
the classes. For code that lives just in your system, use whatever you
want.

Counterexample: Microsoft early on used the package structure
"com.ms.*" even though they didn't have the "ms.com" domain;
presumably "ms" was easier to type for lazy Redmond programmers than
"microsoft".

 

[Chris Uppal]

I've got it. Everyone who owns a MAC address can have a java domain of
the form
mac.${MACADDRESS}.${TIMESTAMP}
where ${MACADDRESS} is their respective MAC address and ${TIMESTAMP} is
the Unix timestamp of some date in which they owned the MAC address.

Nice ;-)

-- chris

 

[Chris Uppal]

Counterexample: Microsoft early on used the package structure
"com.ms.*" even though they didn't have the "ms.com" domain;

And ms.com was a real domain at the time too -- for yet another dose of
corporate arrogance. I seem to recall that it was owned by some law firm at
the time (a very vague memory), although it's owned by Morgan Stanley now.

I agree, though, that the package naming convention is better viewed as a very
sensible guideline, than as a Rule Which Must Never Be Broken.

-- chris

 

[John Ersatznom]

It makes no difference how you name your packages if they are only used within
your own organisation (living room, whatever). The only constraint is that
you avoid "inbound" clashes (as it were) which you can do by, say, putting all
your stuff under "local" (local.mystuff.whatever) since "local" isn't a TLD and
is unlikely to become one. If, on the other hand, you /do/ want to make your
code more generally available then you almost certainly are going to put it
somewhere with an associated global URL -- in which case you can use that for
the root of the package names.

Then you get into the problem of ensuring that that URL continues to
belong to your software for as long as the software remains in use. It's
very hard to get any kind of stable Web hosting at all on a budget
nowadays ("stable" as in "url doesn't change -- ever"). Probably you
also want the javadocs to be hosted stably for others to link to.

Why isn't there a good, free Web host these days, let alone one with
staying power that doesn't rearrange things internally on its own? It
seems you're artificially constrained to three options -- keep your
software entirely private, use an existing open source hosting site like
SourceForge, or go commercial *and be successful*. Anything else means
paying for hosting out of your own pocket, *on top* of whatever you
already pay for network access (shouldn't hosting of at least a small to
medium amount of data at a stable address be included as basic network
access? But it's not...) and that means you'll be paying to keep your
Java online and legitimate for a lifetime (its or yours).

So much for "free", even as in beer...

 

[John Ersatznom]

And ms.com was a real domain at the time too -- for yet another dose of
corporate arrogance. I seem to recall that it was owned by some law firm at
the time (a very vague memory), although it's owned by Morgan Stanley now.

I agree, though, that the package naming convention is better viewed as a very
sensible guideline, than as a Rule Which Must Never Be Broken.

Agreed. In fact, given the choice between paying an additional $35 a
month for life to "rent" my package name root or breaking the
convention, I'll pick breaking the convention -- especially on my
current income, which is not particularly stellar (under $20K/year USD)...

 

[Daniel Dyer]

Agreed. In fact, given the choice between paying an additional $35 a
month for life to "rent" my package name root or breaking the
convention, I'll pick breaking the convention -- especially on my
current income, which is not particularly stellar (under $20K/year
USD)...

A fair point but, just to be clear, it's not per month - $35 will get you
2 years.

Dan.