Re: Stallman lamenting that GCJ and ClassPath are still (read: eternally) catching up ...

[Chris Burdess <dog at bluezoo dot org>]

Christopher Marshall wrote:
> In terms of "useful things it can do", gcj is ahead of Sun in some 
> ways, is it not?  The license
> and the ability to compile to native exectuables, for example.  Does 
> gcj support more
> architectures?  If it did, that would be worth singing about.

On PowerPC Linux, the free Java environments (gcj, kaffe, etc), and 
IBM's JDK are all more up to date (1.4 feature-complete) than Sun's 
implementation (latest is Blackdown 1.3.1).

> > I see Richard's post as a way [2] of introducing a new audience how 
> > far
> > GNU Classpath has come, inviting them to try it out for their apps, 
> > and
> > dip into the pool of free software java runtimes. If more people from
> > the Java open source world read the article and try out their
> > applications and libraries with GNU Classpath based runtimes, report 
> > the
> > bugs they find, and eventually submit bug-fixes and become GNU 
> > Classpath
> > developers themselves, then we're all in for the better.
>
> That was my take on it also.  Stallman's article was pretty good.  
> Part of it did seem more like a
> plea for help though (help us before the forces of evil extinguish us 
> once and for all!  we are so
> fragile!), when it could have sounded like a "look what we can do and 
> they can't" piece.

My take on it was more along the lines of: if you are developing free 
Java code, do not assume WORA just because it works on Sun's 
implementation - *test* your code in *free* Java environments.
--
Chris Burdess