On Tue, Sep 14, 1999 at 09:30:23PM -0700, Cris J. Holdorph wrote: > Ean R . Schuessler Writes: > > So, what can we do about it? I have been giving the subject some small > > amount of thought and have been having conversations with Tim > > Wilkinson (Kaffe) for almost a year now. My opinion is that the only > > reasonable response is a large scale, highly organized, optimally > > minimalized fork against the Sun version of Java. This is a path that > > is fraught with public relations peril and is almost inconceivably > > difficult as a technical challenge. That said, I think that it is not > > impossible and that the SPI infrastructure represents an excellent > > launch pad for such an effort. > > If this ever happens, I will no longer support Debian or SPI, and I will > try to use other alternatives. > > I thoroughly disagree that even a "minimal" fork is good for Java. > I encourage and applaud those doing free implementations from the published > Sun documents that are not under SCSL (e.g., books in stores). I disagree > with the SCSL. But let me restate, that I a LONG TIME advocate of Debian, > will become one of it's staunchest opponets if SPI becomes involved in > any kind of "fork" of Java.
Chris, could you go into more detail why? I think the effort will be great, and the returns might be small. (I am not sure it is worth it...) But, I think you are reading the idea of 'fork' incorrectly. It could be that I am also incorrectly interpreting it... The way I saw Ean's proposal, we would work on a free implementation based off of an earlier version of JDK that allows forks -- and we would implement java exactly as the spec suggests, keeping up with the changes to the sun jdk, and improving it where we can -- *NOT* the language, but the JDK. I think Ean and everyone else would agree that trying to fork the language is a Bad Idea. Trying to fork the development environment .. well, I am not sure the returns would be worth the effort. Ean does. (I think. :) But, forked development environments are nothing new -- think egcs/gcc. Eventually the egcs group's better compiler supplanted the gcc compiler upon which it was based. (It is a bit painful as a transition, from my vantage point, but that is because the linux kernel abuses assumptions that were valid under gcc, but not under the ANSI specifications...) I think Ean is aiming for the same thing -- make a better JDK, one that is free, and maybe Sun will want the value of our work, and put their programmers to work on a completely free JDK -- presumably using our fork as a starting point. And that doesn't seem like something to crusade against.. So, did I misread you? Did I misread Ean? [As for my own thoughts, I think the programmer time might better be spent on one of the free competitors -- they are almost there, but need some filling in.. why not make something very much free, without any Sun legalities to tip-toe around at all times..] -- Seth Arnold | http://www.willamette.edu/~sarnold/ Hate spam? See http://maps.vix.com/rbl/ for help Hi! I'm a .signature virus! Copy me into your ~/.signature to help me spread!
