Re: [Savannah-hackers] Re: Java pages: project on savannah

[Richard Stallman]

    This seems to be historical, I think the GNU project initially
    thought of Java as a usefull, script like language and not a practical
    language for code in the GNU project.

Yes.

     The gnu-java evaluation
    system seems to have been set up before rms formalized the overall
    evaluation system

That is true.

                      and it seems that gnu-java is now out of step.

No, it usually does a different kind of job.

The evaluation team's job is to decide questions such as whether we
would like to make something a GNU package.

When we want to judge whether to accept a Java program as a GNU
package, the evaluation should be essentially the same as what we do
for a C program or a Perl program.  The language does not matter
fundamentally.  So that job could be done by the evaluation team.

But gnu-java is normally asked to decide whether to mention a package
and make a link to it--as you recognized:

    The current
    system is accepting java programs and listing them on our website as a
    service to the java community... it's not making them part of the GNU
    project. 

That is a much easier question than deciding whether we want it as a
GNU package; the criteria are simpler and the threshold is lower.  It
does not make sense to go to the evaluators team for this kind of
question.  We don't give such questions to the evaluators team for
non-Java programs; the webmasters handle it.

I think we should not change the way we handle this job.

    My own view is that the GNU project should try to offer something
    more to the java community. A number of projects and completed
    programs and libraries which provide GNU java in a coherant and
    sensible form.

That might be a useful project, if people want to work on it.  But we
should continue making links to non-GNU Java programs, and gnu-java
may as well keep handling that.