Re: A plea for a distribution of the XML/Java Apache tools
We work with Java technology very extensively, especially Enterprise Java
Beans. Your real problem here is Sun, not the Linux distributors, because
the Sun licenses pretty much prevent redistribution of their tools. The
JRE itself is redistributable, but not the JDK.
Because of the Sun license, Linux distributors are mostly prevented from
putting the JDK under their often quite sophisticated package management
systems, which would allow easy maintenance. Debian has a partial
solution where there are dummy packages ("java-virtual-machine-dummy" and
"java-compiler-dummy") which the user can install, essentially notifying
the package management system that the user is taking responsibility for
providing the JRE and JDK. This makes it possible to have Debian packages
such as the Apache JServ engine or Apache Cocoon supplied as packages.
However, there is no expectation that a package configured in this way
would actually work unless the user had done a whole bunch of things
manually first. Since it is obviously impossible for the package
maintainer to know how the user has installed software which may not even
have existed when the package was released, the burden of integration
necessarily falls upon the user. One could certainly assert that this is
a bad idea, but it is the way Sun chooses to do it.
-- Mike
On 2000-05-23 at 14:22 +0200, Alessandro Bottoni wrote:
> I'm sure that all of you know very well the Apache group (
> http://www.apache.org ) and their set of Java/XML tools for the web
> publishing ( http://java.apache.org , http://jakarta.apache.org ,
> http://xml.apache.org ).
* * *
> So I wonder: are you evaluating the possibility of making a
> professional-level "distribution" of this toolset, aimed to the WWW
> specialists? If yes, when it will be available? If no, why?
>
> The XML/Java Tools developed by the Apache people are quite mature and could
> be used for production servers but, unfortunatley, they are quite hard (or,
> at least, extremely tedious) to install and configure. This keeps many
> webmaster from using them.
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