> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Peter Mehlitz
>
> Hi,
>
> As a Kaffe protagonist, I was recently asked by EarthWeb for an
> article about
> Linux & Java, and I don't want to restrict this on kaffe and to
> "deliberately
> ignore" other Java projects. Classpath certainly has to be
> mentioned, and I
> therefore would like to ask a few questions:
>
> (1) Any objections that I include Classpath? Seems to be a silly
> questions,
> but since kaffe has its own class libs, many expect us to show
> rivalry. Given
> the common threat of a proprietarized Java, this is IMHO
> nonsense, and there
> is no reason why OpenSource shouldn't raise above it.
>
There is some crosstalk between the two projects, and mostly friendly.
There is a slight rivalry between the two projects, as there always will be
between projects that occupy the same niche. I don't think it's a very big
deal. Just people worrying about license issues.
> (2) How do you cope with the 1.2 API inflation? Especially with
> respect to the
> AWT and all its extensions (since this is my native branch, as you might
> know)? How do you feel about the API specs in general, and the AWT
> specifications in particular (suitable for a standard, testability)?
>
We plan to support the whole thing, but damn, it's big. With some packages,
like java.beans, just *updating* from 1.1 is at least as big a job as
creating the packages was in the first place. Much of the new stuff I've
seen has a bloated feel to it, too ... Java 2 is trying to be all things to
all people. It's going to be a big download, which also isn't good for
Java. I think they went overboard, personally.
> (3) How do you expect Suns "community license" to affect your contributors
> (more, less, not relevant)?
>
It could be a problem if a lot of developers start looking at the source
code thinking it's free. Then they can't contribute to Classpath in the
areas they've looked at. The community source license still doesn't permit
people to look at Sun's code as a reference implementation to find out what
it does. Classpath is a cleanroom project because Sun has lots of lawyers
that could bark at us. Their code still isn't free. Correct me if I'm
wrong, Paul: I think the decision a while back was that people still
couldn't contribute in areas they looked at the code--even under the
community source license.
> (4) anything you would like me to mention (people, needs, plans, future
> releases, other projects, ..)?
>
Japhar and Muave, mainly. Muave is very important for the free software
Java community--it's the only way we can get some standards compliance.
Japhar is a good reference implementation of a VM with a solid basic design.
You might mention ElectricalFire, too--another free JIT being developed at
Mozilla: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/ef/. I am not sure what they are
doing right now. They may end up using Classpath as their class library.
--John Keiser
