Tony Dean wrote:
>
> Nathan,
>
> It is a bit daunting and possibly impossible as there is enough gray
> area in the spec
> as to implement a language that is not capable of passing the Java
> validation suite of tests and
> that is the only thing I can think of that could be used to verify the
> user has implemented
> the spec. (hmmm... a bit circular).
I wouldn't argue with you in the least on this point. Mostly what that
copyright means is that Sun has another legal hammer, outside of the
SCSL, should cloning activity be perceived as threatening. There was
speculation in the Kaffe mailing list, around the time the Microsoft
classes were added, as to whether that hammer would be used - the good
news so far is: no hammer.
> Kaffe is a clean room implementation to the spec but they have
> expanded the
> language in some interesting ways. I seem to recall they used the
> MS alternative
> to JNI but maybe they put in JNI as well. From a recent read of Kaffe
> I got the
> impression that they stopped at 1.1.1 and did not know if they were
> headed for 1.2
> or 1.3.
My impression is that Kaffe grows toward newer Java specs as 1) needed
for the business requirements of Transvirtual, and 2) contributed by
members of the community. So far, they've got just a very few 1.2-isms.
By contrast, Japhar and Classpath aggressively try to track the spec. To
date, the result is that Kaffe is pretty well cooked and
Japhar/Classpath are not. Not to criticize... I want to see all these
efforts wildly succeed. But there's an awful lot of evidence that
mounting a serious Java environment effort is not really possible
without the financial resources to feed and clothe a small army of
full-time developers.
Nathan
>
> Of course once we enter the standards process we can do anything from
> start with
> a clean sheet of paper up to (more or less) Java.
>
> I presented a paper on using JNI with Linux at the Atlanta Linux
> Showcase and the feedback
> ran from one guy telling me this was exactly what he needed to someone
> else wanting to
> rewrite the entire Java class library with JNI and opensource. A
> replacement library that
> relied on opensource would be a good place to start and I even had a
> publisher interested in
> a book along those lines.
>
> What next? Well I guess I'll start making some calls and get back to
> those who are
> interested and start a splinter group.
>
> Nathan Meyers wrote:
>
> > Tony Dean wrote:
> > > 1) Sun owns the Java trademark. They have published the VM spec
> > and
> > > the language spec. They permit rogue ports from the specs.
> >
> > There is already an excellent "rogue port" in the Kaffe project,
> > although "cleanroom implementation" is a better term. Interestingly,
> >
> > even the spec carries some scary language... check out paragraph 6
> > of
> > the copyright from the JVM spec, about the license to "practice this
> >
> > specification":
> >
> > http://java.sun
> > com/docs/books/vmspec/2nd-edition/html/Copyright.doc.html#997057
> >
> > Nathan
> >
>
> --
> Tony Dean
> Linux: The choice of a GNU Generation!
>
>
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