I have been observing the various discussions about changing java policy etc .. I feel that despite whatever decisions we make about free and non-free VMs and tools etc, we should firstly pay attention to simply compiling our software with free tools and against free libraries or free APIs. For example there is a debian package called jikes-classpath which can be used to compile programs against the GNU Classpath libraries. Every debian java packager should attempt to compile his package with this tool (or other free compilers). In cases where the compilation fails because the API is incorrect, incomplete or missing you should report a bug to the Classpath/relevant project. You could also post a message to this mailing list saying something like "package X doesn't compile because of an incomplete implementation of Y". It is our duty as a community to let each other know where free software is lacking and specifically what needs to be fixed. Much of the time this work can be trivial because implementing an API to compile against is much much easier than implementing the functionality. I haven't discussed the question of whether it is correct for a program that can be compiled with free software but not run with free software to go into main. Whatever the outcome of that argument, I still feel it is very important to focus on being able to compile with free tools and getting a larger community involved in identifying and fixing problems. -- John Leuner <jewel@pixie.co.za>
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part