On Mon, 2005-04-18 at 21:39 +0530, Joe Steeve wrote:
"Mahesh T. Pai" paivakil@sancharnet.in writes:
There are plenty implementations of Free (as in freedom JREs. So, why worry?
Java is not standardized. Hence these JREs are not fully compatible with the JRE provided by SUN. Hence, there are always
Java is pretty well standardized, I think. The JVM has a proper spec, and there are freely accessible reference implementations. The present work that is required to be done is creating a complete independent, patent-unencumbered, and Free implementation of both the JVM and the class libraries.
GNU classlibs have been working on creating a Free implementation of the class libraries and Kaffe, etc. have been working on a compatible JVM.
The work to be done is however massive - Java standard libraries has thousands of classes to be re-implemented, and biggest differentiating factor among JVM implementations is turning out to be JIT and other run time optimizations (e.g. Suns Hot spot technology). Therefore there is a lot of catch up to do for Free alternatives.
Exasperated with the incompleteness of these Free alternatives, many are instead doing the next best thing - cajoling/threatening/pleading Suna nd IBM to Open source their implementations.
- Sandip
-- Sandip Bhattacharya * Puroga Technologies * sandip@puroga.com Work: http://www.puroga.com * Home/Blog: http://www.sandipb.net/blog
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