On May 10, 2005, at 10:26 AM, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
Kalecser Kurtz wrote:I fail to see the point on writing open source software for Windows, on windows we already have SUN's and IBM's java impl and I think noone would care to have an free(from freedom) java impl.
Some shortsighted people said the same when mozilla started ;-)
I would add to this. It's a story we've seen time and time again. First came GCC. Not only was it a free compiler, but it was also the first compiler that ran the SAME on all (then extant) platforms. Over the course of about 5 years, it overtook and superceded all other C compilers (except Microsoft's) for that reason. This is the power of "embrace and extend", turned around to the free software world.
Same thing with Mozilla. I use Firefox on my Linux, Mac and PCs. Why? Why don't I use IE or Safari or Konqueror so much? Because Firefox is cross-platform, I can use it the same way wherever I go.
Why has Evolution NOT taken over Email even though it had the lead on full-text indexing for AT LEAST 2 years? (This is something Outlook STILL didn't do last time I checked). Because Evolution runs ONLY on Linux.
I believe it's essential to get Harmony running on Windows. It will inevitably be different from Sun's Java: the bugs will be different, some features will be missing, and some extra features will be added. If Harmony runs cross-platform, then a Harmony-java developer can be sure a program will run on Linux/Windows/Mac. If not, then the Harmony developer must always drag out the Sun implementation to make sure the app runs on Sun's Java (which will be required for windows). And once you've dragged out Sun's Java, why bother using Harmony at all? No one wants to do QA on their program twice, if they only have to do it once.
