Re: How mature are the Free Software efforts on Java?

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi,

On Thu, Nov 08, 2001 at 02:32:03PM +0100, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> Brian Jones <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> > That's the ugly side... the other side is that multiple VMs use some
> > form of Classpath and you can actually run some applications with it.
> 
> Wow.  That's pretty impressive, considering the still very low
> version number of Classpath :-)

Yes, must of the "license wars" you are seeing on the list right now
come from the fact that GNU Classpath is really getting usefull right
now and more and more projects are or want to use it as their implementation
of the standard java libraries. If you are just starting with the DotGNU
project I would really suggest you think about licensing issues, copyleft,
GPL, derived works, etc. from the start.
When you have such a really dynamic and integrated environment like
the Java Platform or like you will have with the DotNet/GNU environment
then defining bounderies between (derived) works is difficult. On one level
it makes it much clearer when programs access each other through network
protocols running on different machines it is hard to not see them as
seperate works (but is it fair?). One another level, the level of the RunTime
Environment and standard/system components/libraries it is really hard to
define what is a seperate work. Classpath for example needs to be linked with
some VM support libraries to funtion properly and the VM needs` to linkr
against some of the standard classes to do its job properly. Etc.

> Do you have a suggestion on how to possibly find a volunteer who
> might be interested in porting one of the Classpath-using VMs to
> make it work with DotGNU ?

How should I interpret that request?
Please forgive my ignorance but what is the goal of the DotGNU project
and how would a java virtual machine and/or the standard java libraries
fit in? Do you want java language support, java library support and/or
java virtual machine/byte code support?

Cheers,

Mark
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