rename Java

[John M. Gabriele]

I've been reading about how Gnome could use a nice
integrated application development language (somewhat
like MS Windows has VB).

The contenders are of course Python, Java, and C#/Mono.
Some free software folks are worried about using Java,
because Sun could make itself into a legal problem in
years to come.

Some folks have posted that Python is good for smaller
apps but becomes unwieldy to debug when writing larger
programs, partly because its lack of static type checking.

I've also read about the "Java Trap" on the GNU site,
and I think I've got a good (likely not original)
solution that addresses the whole enchilada: rename the
language implemented by GCJ.

I posted the idea here:
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=10475#369791
the text of which follows:

> I'd like to see them just drop the "Java" name entirely
> (a la CentOS/RHEL). Get GCJ, Classpath, and Kaffe all to
> rename the language they implement to something like
> "tintol" ("This Is Not That Other Language" ;) ).
> s/java/tintol/gi everywhere.
> 
> Everyone would know it's really Java (but not really
> Java). This way, we wouldn't have to worry about
> (possibly years down the road) Sun pulling a SCO.
> 
> In fact, in a few years, tintol would likely be an
> industry standard, with Java being a lesser-used
> proprietary implementation of it.

This seems like a stupendously good idea to me. Have
the tintol website subtitle be something like,

|
|     "The programming language and libs shockingly
|     similar to Sun's Java -- but it isn't Java. Not by
|     any stretch of your fevered imagination is tintol
|     the same as Java."
|

Months down the road, if it became a problem, you could
even remove any traces of the words "Sun" or "Java" from
the site -- devs would still know the deal.

MS renamed Java as C#. Why not do the same thing and beat
them at their own game?

I could see Gnome adopting tintol (or whatever it eventually
ends up getting named) if indeed changing the name removes
worries of future litigation. The Java-Gnome folks would
jump all over this too, no?

What do you think?


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