Re: [Savannah-hackers] submission of Peer Agent - savannah.nongnu.org

[Sylvain Beucler]

On Fri, Oct 08, 2004 at 04:50:30PM -0400, Robert Fischer, PhD wrote:
> > > The peeragent system needs to run untrusted mobile code in a sandbox. 
> 
> > You see that the situation and the goals were not of the same kind.
> > See also this recent article:
> > http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html
> 
> I'm sorry, but I think you are assuming that anything written in Java
> can be done in any other system as well.  That is not the case.  As I
> said before, I need a way to sandbox code.  GCJ does not provide that
> functionality.  Kaffe doesn't provide it.  And working further on
> development of GCJ and CLASSPATH (as suggested in the "Java Trap"
> article) will not provide it either.
> 
> Unfortunately, I have found no proposal regarding any of the free Java
> system you mention to implement the Java security features needed to run
> untrusted code in a sandbox.  Simply telling me to use GCJ will not make
> the problem go away.  By DESIGN, GCJ is not able to provide the required
> functionality (although it is a great compiler for code you trust, and
> it has saved my butt).
> 
> In the past, the FSF used UNIX because when the GNU project was started,
> no free alternative to UNIX existed.  I used Sun's Java because when I
> started the project, no free alternative to Sun/IBM Java existed.

In the quotation I gave you, RMS wrote that "it was legitimate to use
a proprietary package when that was curcial for developing a free
replacement that would help others stop using the proprietary
package." That's the 'exception'.

Here, you are not developing a free sandbox environnement; you are
using it. This will not help to get rid of the proprietary dependency.

It is not acceptable to say "there is no free software for that task,
so I use proprietary software".

The same way, when Qt was proprietary, some people said "there is no
free software replacement for all these Qt facilities, so I use
it". Free software developers didn't rely on that proprietary package
and stuck with X or LessTif, or worked on Gtk or Harmony.

If you cannot create your software without making it depend on
proprietary software, we think it is better you do not release it.


Independently of the above, are you sure the problem comes from GCJ?
It seems to me that the security manager would be located in GIJ, with
checks in the Classpath library.

Did you contact the people working on free java software (and as you
suggested, free .net software)? The fact they do not mention any
sandbox does not mean there is not any under work. For example,
http://sv.gnu.org/p/gcjwebplugin/ . Can do that?


Some various remarks after I reread your project description:
- BCEL is free software, it is just GPL-incompatible (Apache License)
- Using Swing is a problem similar to the sandbox one. Still, you
  can use AWT, SWT or the Gtk Java bindings.

-- 
Sylvain