Enrico Weigelt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> posted [EMAIL PROTECTED], 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 -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
