> > We all have our preferences in languages, but I think this should play > > a minor role in our thinking. The maintainability of code depends not > > just on the language but also on the various frameworks and libraries > > employed, and of course the design of the software itself. > > And how many people in the FLOSS community are likely to contribute. > Fact is, Java is a heavily minority language in that space.
Certainly, yes. But hey, tenacity can produce good results, as Stallman has taught us all. I've claimed that Java offers some things that are difficult or impossible with the more common FLOSS languages. If I'm right, then tenacity on the Java front will yield benefits to the community. In general, I've found Java/Swing development to be far easier and faster than C/C++/GNOME or C++/Qt. And I've found that (except for RPM or deb-packaged software), Java programs are much more likely to "just work" if I download them to my desktop and run them. More attention to Java could enlarge the FLOSS community by drawing in developers who want to contribute but don't have skills in PHP, Perl, Python or C/C++. There is actually tons of free software in Java (witness all the packages I've managed to cobble together for OA, about 70 of them and counting). The Apache Foundation is a big contributor of Java Code, and they're thankfully now GPLv3 compatible. There are also huge communities around Eclipse and NetBeans, to mention a few. So I think it's possible that there are a lot more free software Java programmers out than we might believe, but that they're not (currently) involved in traditional FSF-type FLOSS networks. The typical Java programmer is probably more likely to run Windows or MacOS on the desktop (although many run GNU/Linux too) and less likely to understand the ins and outs of apt-get, Debian, autoconf, gcj, etc. These are on the whole a more applications-oriented group of programmers. But free software applications (beyond web apps) are badly needed, so I think the FLOSS community ignores application-oriented programmers at its own peril. Many Java programmers care about free software, and have consciously avoided .NET (which is very similar technologically and superior in some ways) because Java is perceived of as being more "free." Hopefully the systems people behind the free Java implementations will not let down this community and will continue to come forth with high-quality, dependable, easy-to-use Java systems. Building a great Java platform and using that platform to build great applications are two different skills. I think there is a (human) language gap that needs to be bridged with Java programmers. These are application programmers, who can build great desktop apps but will be shakier on configuring a chroot jail. -- Bob _______________________________________________ software mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.flossfoundations.org/mailman/listinfo/foundations-software
