[Savannah-hackers] Re: Blackdown & "Sun only" features

[David R. Hill]

On Mon, 14 Jul 2003, Richard Stallman wrote:

>       It will
>     likely help that FSF now appears to endorse free Java use (we were using
>     Blackdown anyway as an intermediate step so, assuming it is OK for the
>     final software package, this could speed things up quite a bit).
> 
> We do endorse using Java as long as the code will run on a free Java
> platform.  But it is very risky to use Blackdown for development,
> because you can use Sun-only fatures that free software won't support,
> and you won't even realize it.

Is there anyone in FSF/gnu who could give me some idea what "Sun only" 
features are included in/tied into Blackdown.  I presume you are thinking 
of imported libraries or something which we don't actually need.

> 
> Do you see the problem?
> 

Yes, it would be a problem if any part were proprietary.  Not clear yet 
that this would be so, that we would not know, or could not avoid the 
problem(s).

d.