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

[Chris Burdess]

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