Re: JFORK: Or a reasonable response to the Sun SCSL
On Tue, Sep 14, 1999 at 09:30:23PM -0700, Cris J. Holdorph wrote:
> Ean R . Schuessler Writes:
> > So, what can we do about it? I have been giving the subject some small
> > amount of thought and have been having conversations with Tim
> > Wilkinson (Kaffe) for almost a year now. My opinion is that the only
> > reasonable response is a large scale, highly organized, optimally
> > minimalized fork against the Sun version of Java. This is a path that
> > is fraught with public relations peril and is almost inconceivably
> > difficult as a technical challenge. That said, I think that it is not
> > impossible and that the SPI infrastructure represents an excellent
> > launch pad for such an effort.
>
> If this ever happens, I will no longer support Debian or SPI, and I will
> try to use other alternatives.
>
> I thoroughly disagree that even a "minimal" fork is good for Java.
> I encourage and applaud those doing free implementations from the published
> Sun documents that are not under SCSL (e.g., books in stores). I disagree
> with the SCSL. But let me restate, that I a LONG TIME advocate of Debian,
> will become one of it's staunchest opponets if SPI becomes involved in
> any kind of "fork" of Java.
Chris, could you go into more detail why? I think the effort will be great,
and the returns might be small. (I am not sure it is worth it...)
But, I think you are reading the idea of 'fork' incorrectly. It could be
that I am also incorrectly interpreting it... The way I saw Ean's proposal,
we would work on a free implementation based off of an earlier version of
JDK that allows forks -- and we would implement java exactly as the spec
suggests, keeping up with the changes to the sun jdk, and improving it where
we can -- *NOT* the language, but the JDK.
I think Ean and everyone else would agree that trying to fork the language
is a Bad Idea. Trying to fork the development environment .. well, I am not
sure the returns would be worth the effort. Ean does. (I think. :) But,
forked development environments are nothing new -- think egcs/gcc.
Eventually the egcs group's better compiler supplanted the gcc compiler upon
which it was based. (It is a bit painful as a transition, from my vantage
point, but that is because the linux kernel abuses assumptions that were
valid under gcc, but not under the ANSI specifications...)
I think Ean is aiming for the same thing -- make a better JDK, one that is
free, and maybe Sun will want the value of our work, and put their
programmers to work on a completely free JDK -- presumably using our fork as
a starting point. And that doesn't seem like something to crusade against..
So, did I misread you? Did I misread Ean?
[As for my own thoughts, I think the programmer time might better be spent
on one of the free competitors -- they are almost there, but need some
filling in.. why not make something very much free, without any Sun
legalities to tip-toe around at all times..]
--
Seth Arnold | http://www.willamette.edu/~sarnold/
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