Wow, didn't know this many people were alive and computing on Sundays :)
My two cents: gnu.* is a hell of a lot easier to use and think about than
org.gnu.*. I still think it looks silly to import com.sun like in JavaDoc.
But I perfectly understand them putting stuff they *don't* want other people
to use (or don't care) in com.sun.*.
Sun gets to create public interfaces in java.*, why don't we get to create
public interfaces in gnu.*?
Frankly, there are only going to be a few major contributors whose toolkits
are going to be *extremely* widely used, and GNU is probably one of them.
Making it easy to type and use and think about (less mental friction) is a
good thing.
--John Keiser
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Thomas Down
> Sent: Sunday, September 12, 1999 5:58 PM
> To: Aaron M. Renn
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: org.gnu vs. gnu (was Re: Congratulations)
>
>
> "Aaron M. Renn" wrote:
> >
> > I'm opposed to org.gnu for the same reason that I hate email addresses
> > of the form [EMAIL PROTECTED] It purports to be some type of
> > globally unique identifier when in fact it is not. In the meantime,
> > it requires names that are extremely verbose. At my last company
> > we had two Gregory R. Barrett's. One of them ended up a
> gregory.r.barrett
> > and the other at greg.r.barrett. It's like making your hash table
> > really, really big in the hopes you won't have a collision.
>
> I'm not quite sure that follows... so long as each package has a
> defined owner who controls what goes in it, there should never be a
> namespace collision using the standard Java system. Okay, code-forks
> spoil this a little bit, but I think the principle still holds.
> Actually, I'd go so far as to say that one of the really cool things
> about Java is that it DOES encourage people to give every class a
> globally unique identifier, and this is a Good Thing for efficient code
> reuse.
>
> It's an unfortunate fact that it's hard to have useful unique
> identifiers without using some form of central registry. One option
> would have been for Sun to run such a registry themselves, but I'm sure
> that would have led to all manner of cries of foul play (and they might
> well have charged for registrations, which I dare say would have led to
> even more complains). Using the DNS as the registry for Java package
> names seems a very neat way out of the problem, and while I accept that
> the names aren't especially pretty, I don't think they cause any real
> problems -- and normally they only affect the package and import
> statements at the top of the source files, anyway.
>
> It's kind-of a pity that there are sun.* packages, but to be fair, some
> of these must have existed before the current naming scheme was
> developed. And Sun do sometimes set a good example: before Swing moved
> to its new home in javax, it was always com.sun.swing, and all the Jini
> stuff lives in net.jini.
>
> In reality, having things in gnu.* isn't actually doing anybody any
> harm, but I'm not sure it's something that anyone can get moralistic
> about, given that Sun are pretty clear as to how things are supposed to
> work, and you can't really argue that it's not fair. Of course, if
> people asked Sun nicely, they might even approve gnu as an `official'
> top level package -- but think carefully before trying that one, it
> might just be opening pandora's box.
>
> Thomas.
>
>
