David Gilbert wrote: > Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote: >> >> >> The only real issue that we had is license incompatibility, but I >> thought there was goodwill everywhere to work where we could. >> > > Why don't we be honest and just admit that there is no goodwill between > the projects? It was there, briefly, but now it is gone. There's no > collaboration, there's no cooperation...just two separate projects > implementing the same API. It is the way it is, and the world is moving > on...but let's stop pretending. > > Regards, > > Dave Gilbert > JFreeChart Project Leader > > P.S. This is a personal opinion, but I'm happy to disclose that I'm an > occasional contributor to the GNU Classpath project.
Hmmm, let's analyze my 'pretending'... 1) I started a 'kaffe + classpath' gump run as a way to help myself and them understand how far along in the 'real world' java implementation they were. 2) I spent several hours on the phone and more emails that I can count over more months that I would like to count discussing ways to change licensing impedance mismatch in both camps, with several representatives from the ASF, the FSF and the "free java" community. NOTE: I was an ASF board member at that time. 3) Once it was clear that a major change in the GPL was the only viable alternative, concerned about the fact that continuing harmony might have impacted Classpath negatively, I asked my "free java" peers for advice and they *all* suggested me to go ahead, that more free java was always a good thing. I was ready to drop my mentoring support for Harmony if that wasn't the case. 4) I'm subscribed to the japi list to help out (did I mention I didn't ask for a license change?) And, last but not least, should I not outline the fact that a licensing bridge between classpath and harmony would only go *in benefit of classpath* since there is no way the ASF would allow harmony to be licensed under the GPL? In short: there are two valleys and a huge mountain in between. A tunnel is being built and it's called GPLv3, but it will flow in only one direction: from our valley to yours. The people of my valley are happy that the other valley existing and prospering and are even happy with the fact that the *other* valley will benefit more from the tunnel than they will. There is competition, but it's healthy and respectful. We did try to find a pass and build a road, we tried, *hard*, we didn't find one so we moved on with our lives, wishing each-other best of luck. Sometimes some climbers manage to get to the other side to find that some people are very welcoming and appreciative of cultural differences while others not so much. -- Stefano.
