Re: gnu.* namespace discussion

[Per Bothner <per at bothner dot com>]

Brian Jones wrote:

> In what way is anyone else using gnu.java.* which conflicts with GNU
> Classpath?  Maybe that's the real problem.  No central name space
> controller has been forthcoming from the FSF.

I didn't see this message (it doesn't seem to have made it to
java-discuss), so I don't know what the "real problem" referred to is.

The central name space controller is supposed to be
        http://www.gnu.org/software/java/java-software.html

Stuart Ballard <sballard@netreach.net> writes:

> Not to beat a dead horse, but I think that's why Sun chose to use the
> reverse-domain-name scheme - the central namespace controller is already
> established and Sun didn't need to do any work on controlling the
> namespace.

No, but each organization still does.  You may notice that Sun does
not appears to be folliwing their reverse-domain-name scheme *within*
the com.sun package.  That seems to be generally true: People follow
the reverse-domain-name scheme for the first two parts, but beyond
that they tend to pick more common-sense names.  In other works: They
just pay lip-service to the reverse-domain-name scheme, and I don't
blame them: It's a bad solution, and there is no reason why Gnu should
follow it.  See: http://www.gnu.org/software/java/why-gnu-packages.txt

> In that case, we could be using org.classpath and do whatever we wanted
> to within that space.

Sure, but what problem would that solve?

> I once heard someone say that if a convincing case could be made to the
> FSF in favor of moving to the reverse-domain scheme from the gnu.*
> scheme, they would maybe consider it. Perhaps the
> central-namespace-controller issue is the basis for a convincing case?

Adding a "org." in front does not make the problem any easier or harder.
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://www.bothner.com/~per/