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


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



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