Re: Article on OpenOffice using GCJ

[Mark Wielaard <mark at klomp dot org>]

Hi,

On Thu, 2005-05-19 at 17:26 +0100, Ingrid Marson wrote:
> I'm interested in writing an article on the version of OpenOffice using
> GCJ that FSF is developing. What is GCJ being used for? - You say it is
> being used to build and run OpenOffice, why is GCJ needed to run
> OpenOffice. Surely once OpenOffice has been built it will run
> independently?

GCJ is the GNU compiler for the java programming language. It is part of
the GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) work of the GNU project. GCJ contains
both a compiler for the java language, runtime support and the GNU
Classpath core libraries. They are development tools.

See http://gcc.gnu.org/java and http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/

GCJ 4 is used to build and run OpenOffice and to support various
features new to OpenOffice 2.0 like Base (database) and jdbc driver
support, document wizards in Writer, XML Docbook exporting and Mail
merges.

For the Free Software community it is essential that all software comes
with some freedoms for its users. Till now OpenOffice was itself Free
Software, but was depending on the proprietary non-free java-platform
which is distributed under a license (unlike OpenOffice itself) that
didn't grant these essential freedoms to users. By replacing the use of
the Java platform by GCJ for OpenOffice we make sure that all users of
the various GNU/Linux distributions get the freedom to run, study, share
and change every part of OpenOffice however they like.

See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html and
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html

> Why have you decided to develop a separate version of OpenOffice? 

We (currently) won't develop a separate version of OpenOffice. The idea
is that all our changes will get adopted by the OpenOffice team and that
future versions of OpenOffice 2.0 won't need a proprietary java compiler
or runtime, but can use GCJ 4 out of the box. Most of this work has
already been done and has already been accepted by the OpenOffice
community. See: http://blogs.linux.ie/caolan/2005/05/04/70/

Both the GCJ and OpenOffice community have said they would like to work
this way. See:
http://www.fsf.org/news/open-office-java.html
http://www.openoffice.org/

> When do you think you will have the first version of OpenOffice using
> GCJ?

We hope that the final release of OpenOffice.org 2.0 will build and run
out of the box with GCJ 4.

It is already possible to build and use a prelimenary version of
OpenOffice that is build and runs with gcj. This version has a couple of
patches and needs some changes from the "official" OpenOffice version.
This is a beta release however. It is currently only shipped with the
Fedora Core 4 test 3 distribution (which is itself a test release). This
version needs more testing. We need to figure out what patches need to
go where (do we need to actually change OpenOffice or do we need to make
changes to GCJ itself?).

> I would be keen to chat to someone about this project. Is there anyone
> that I can speak to (ideally between 9am and 6pm GMT on Friday)? If so,
> please can you email me your phone number and a time that I can call
> you.

If nobody else has contacted you yet, please send me a private email and
I will give you my contact information. I won't be available on Friday,
but we could talk on Monday if you haven't spoken to someone else by
then.

Some more background material can be found in the following articles:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1815484,00.asp
http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/05/16/1358227.shtml

Sincerely,

Mark Wielaard
GNU Classpath Maintainer

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