[gentoo-dev] Re: User support system [WAS: Sunrise contemplations]

[Duncan]

Enrico Weigelt <weigelt@×××××.de> posted
20060816192939.GC552@××××××.local, excerpted below, on  Wed, 16 Aug 2006
21:29:40 +0200:

> Java generally is designed for a very wide range of platforms
> and architectures. If some major archs are missing an proper
> java implementation, then it's a bug, which sooner or later
> will be fixed.

You ever seen the term "slaveryware"?  You have now.  One of the problems
with proprietary slaveryware is that support on a platform is subject to
the whim of the one controlling the code.  If a platform doesn't have
enough users for the code's master to bother, you are out of luck.  Java
is a good example.  I'm on amd64, where Java porting was well behind most
of the popular freedomware apps, because it had to wait for its master to
do it, while all popular freedomware had already been ported by users on
the platform, something they of course couldn't do with Java, as it's
slaveryware that the master hadn't deigned to port yet.

The freedomware implementations try, and there are decent jvms, but
without freedomware implementations of the classes, they aren't anywhere
close to complete, and with the standards for those continuing to mature
and everyone else having to wait on the standards to implement, they will
naturally always be behind.  Given the incompleteness of the solution, it
really doesn't make sense to worry to much about porting even the
freedomware versions to all available platforms.

Well, that may eventually change, as Sun is now saying it expects to start
freeing Java this year, and finish by the end of next year.  They've been
making noises about GPL3 as well, so while the license hasn't been
announced, that's possible, and would fit the timing.  Time will tell, I
suppose.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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