Re: [Savannah-hackers] savannah.gnu.org: submission of LumberMill

[Robert Bushman]

Hi Loic,

On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Loic Dachary wrote:

>       The distinction is basically the same as in Debian. You have
> software that is in main (no dependency to non free software), in
> contrib (dependcy to non free software) and non-free (non free
> software ;-).
>
>       On Savannah it was decided to provide resources to software
> that fit in main, i.e. that we can use with the currently available
> Free Software tools.

Very similar to Jaime's explanation, which I now
completely understand. And as noted to Jaime, I
take advantage of the resultant benefits every
day with my GNU/Linux workstations and servers.

> In short, the proprietary software, gratis or not, is basically
> jeopardizing the freedom of the whole system.

All agreed.

> They very well know that introducing a strong dependency to a
> proprietary software

This is where I think my software differs a little bit,
though understandably not enough to meet your standards.
The dependancy of my software on the Sun SDK is not
strong, it is temporal. As soon as Kaffe fully supports
Java 2, it will work. I understand that this is splitting
hairs, and am not suggesting that you reconsider.

>       As Jaime said, we should encourage the evolution and creation of
> Free Software Java implementations. Is there any chance you can run your
> software with the existing implementations ?

This is possible, but unlikely. I make fairly
heavy use of the Swing API in LumberMill, and
I'm wagering that section is not complete in the
Frees. Even if it is, Log4j makes some fairly
intricate use of ObjectInputStream and its
support classes. That is some seriously twisted
code and is almost certainly not 100% yet.

Even if it was, I couldn't guarantee that it
would remain Kaffe friendly. If I find some API
in the Sun spec that's a significant technical
improvement, I will want to use it. This is
particularly true in Log4j, whose philosophy is
set by the Apache Software Foundation and Ceki
Gulcu. I am merely a contributor.

> If not could you help them improve in some way ?

Unfortunately I have my hands full with Log4j and
LumberMill (oh yeah, and the constant annoyance of
a job :) at the moment. My socialized software
development philosophy revolves more around making
gratis, Open Source, development tools available to
make it easier for developers to earn a living by
creating value in the commercial marketplace, and for
commercial enterprises to more efficiently reap the
benefits of the technological revolution. I'm an
economist, not a socialist (which is not to say
that one is necessarily better than the other). In
fact, those who do not understand the distinction
think I'm a rather hardcore capitalist.

Thanks for the time and info! Next time I start
on a GPL project in one of the Free languages,
I'll be back!

Bob