Hi all,
Sun has just released (most of) the JDK under the GPL, hurray!
Looking forward to the next devel cycle what will this mean? I haven't looked yet at which parts are missing, as some parts are missing since they are not Sun's to open.
But I think we need a new java strategy for F8, or otherwise surely F9, taking the GPL JDK into account. In my limited experience gcj, although a great achievement, fails to run many java programs, including many opensource java programs, out of the box.
I've been tempted sometimes to try and fix either the app or gcj, but after Sun's promise I've opted to invest my time elsewhere. Although I'm a java noob, I'm also a quick learner, and I'm thinking about sinking some serious time into this, but we first need a strategy I think.
Well thats really all I've to say about this, not much really, but I'm kind hoping this will be the start of a very interesting thread :)
Regards,
Hans
On Tue, 2007-08-05 at 22:42 +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
Well thats really all I've to say about this, not much really, but I'm kind hoping this will be the start of a very interesting thread :)
Just FYI: a few of the leaders Fedora's java stuff are at JavaOne this week so I doubt they'll have time to respond that quickly.
I speak with no authority but I'm sure we'll have OpenJDK in Fedora 8 if not some time in the Fedora 7 cycle. There are still the encumbered bits to work out in the short term. In the longer term, we need to think about platform coverage. I'm confident, though, that we'll have an openjdk alternative (as in alternatives) soon. fedora-devel-java-list is where most of the discussion will take place, I imagine.
HTH,
Andrew
"Andrew" == Andrew Overholt overholt@redhat.com writes:
Andrew> I speak with no authority but I'm sure we'll have OpenJDK in Andrew> Fedora 8 if not some time in the Fedora 7 cycle. There are Andrew> still the encumbered bits to work out in the short term. In Andrew> the longer term, we need to think about platform coverage. Andrew> I'm confident, though, that we'll have an openjdk alternative Andrew> (as in alternatives) soon.
Which Fedora release this ships in depends on how quickly the encumbrances can be lifted. Also my current understanding is that the standard names ("Java", "OpenJDK") can't be used unless the TCK is passed, and I don't know when this will all be set up. "Ice tea" has been proposed as an interim name :-)
Platform coverage is also important but perhaps a bit less so; though I suppose setting the standard here is up to the Fedora governing board. The problem is that there is no PPC port and the best guess today is that there won't be one before F8.
Anyway, yes, assuming various minor remaining hurdles can be jumped, OpenJDK is the future. We have always said that it is better to have a single good implementation.
Tom
Tom Tromey wrote:
Platform coverage is also important but perhaps a bit less so; though I suppose setting the standard here is up to the Fedora governing board. The problem is that there is no PPC port and the best guess today is that there won't be one before F8.
Assuming you can get the encumbrances removed and get a 100% Free software solution soon then including OpenJDK in x86 and x86_64 which covers about 80% of our users[1] while putting in GCJ for PPC in Fedora 8 and continuing to push for a PPC port would be a good approach.
Rahul
Actually, I'm kinda interested; what is the difference between i386, i586 and i686?
On Tuesday, May 08, 2007 10:52 pm Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Tom Tromey wrote:
Platform coverage is also important but perhaps a bit less so; though I suppose setting the standard here is up to the Fedora governing board. The problem is that there is no PPC port and the best guess today is that there won't be one before F8.
Assuming you can get the encumbrances removed and get a 100% Free software solution soon then including OpenJDK in x86 and x86_64 which covers about 80% of our users[1] while putting in GCJ for PPC in Fedora 8 and continuing to push for a PPC port would be a good approach.
Rahul
On Wed, 2007-05-09 at 08:22 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
including OpenJDK in x86 and x86_64 which covers about 80% of our users[1]
Well, according to that link it's more like 98%. PPC is less than 1.5%, hardly a reason to hold back on deploying OpenJDK in F8...
Le Mer 9 mai 2007 07:27, Bill Nottingham a écrit :
Tom Tromey (tromey@redhat.com) said:
Which Fedora release this ships in depends on how quickly the encumbrances can be lifted.
Is it a matter of lifting the encumberances, or just re-implementing said parts (and what are those parts?)
One of the parts publicly pointed out was the font rendering, which is fine since java should have switched to fontconfig years ago (die font.properties die die die). Hope the old code is replaced soonish.
Bill Nottingham writes:
Tom Tromey (tromey@redhat.com) said:
Which Fedora release this ships in depends on how quickly the encumbrances can be lifted.
Is it a matter of lifting the encumberances, or just re-implementing said parts (and what are those parts?)
I'm going to spend the next couple of days figuring that out.
Andrew.
"Bill" == Bill Nottingham notting@redhat.com writes:
Which Fedora release this ships in depends on how quickly the encumbrances can be lifted.
Bill> Is it a matter of lifting the encumberances, or just re-implementing Bill> said parts (and what are those parts?)
Re-implementing -- and to be clear, everybody, including Sun, wants to do this. The binary blobs are a temporary measure.
The bits I know about are some color management things (Roman has already successfully dropped in the Classpath impl -- but this too is not a permanent fix), parts of the Java 2D rendering pipeline, and some the font rasterizer. This is just what they mentioned on stage, I haven't dug into the sources to see more details.
Tom