On Jun 6, 2005, at 9:11 AM, Archie Cobbs wrote:
Peter Donald wrote:
I assume that if the Harmony JVM gets half as good as is hoped
there will be companys who want to adopt the JVM but continue to
use Suns class library so that differences in libraries don't hurt
their customers.
If that is a goal of Harmony then we've just made things a lot harder.
First of all, Sun's class library <-> VM interface is proprietary and
unpublished. How would people become experts in it without studying
the Sun source code, with all the potential legal problems that
entails?
Because it's possible that Sun finds this aspect of Harmony valuable
overall, and contributes information to help shape this.
Secondly, you can no longer use Classpath as is, so Harmony will have
to create a new fork of the Classpath code. Lots of work, zero forward
progress.
No, we won't fork GNU Classpath. I don't understand why you believe
we have to do this.
Thirdly, what's to stop Sun from changing things around every release?
Their API is not standardized in any way. It involves "sun.*"
classes, etc.
Nothing.
On the other hand, if down the road the various interested parties
got together and said, "Let's all agree on a common class library/JVM
API" then certainly Harmony should be involved and supportive. However
somehow to me that seems about as likely as Toyota, Ford, and GM all
agreeing to standardize the connection between engines and gearboxes.
That agreement is one of the things we're trying to do here,
remember. I don't know if the analogy is right though (although
there is a bit of standardization in the auto industry). Maybe the
computer industry would be a better example? :)
geir
-Archie
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Archie Cobbs * CTO, Awarix * http://
www.awarix.com
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Geir Magnusson Jr +1-203-665-6437
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