On Sat, Feb 02, 2002 at 01:22:23PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > All of this being said (.net, mono, etc.) , I've always been amazed > that Linux heads aren't rabid supporters of Sun, Java and EJB. It may > not be free, but it is open and above board.
Ganesh Prasad actually wrote a well reasoned article on Linux Today about just this topic in August of last year. His view was that the only real viable competition the free software world has against .NET was to fully and wholeheartedly embrace J2EE. IMNSHO, Java is still not there yet. There are still compatibility (among VMs) and performance issues that need to be resolved. But I believe it will get there. Problem is, there's still not a completely free software implementation of a complete Java environment. Kaffe looked like it was on the way, but it seems to have stagnated for about a year and a half, now. I was pleased to discover that some of that code was integrated into to gcj, however. But Ganesh made a good point. We *will* eventually have a completely free Java environment. But that's tomorrow's battle. (I thought that gcj was a good sign of one piece of that puzzle being put into place.) And why should we wait until that happens? Although I tend to agree with RMS on many (but not all) issues, this is not one of them. If there is a reasonably good possibility that a completely free alternative will eventually replace a non-free piece of software, then don't wait for that to happen. Work with the non-free stuff with an eye to replacing it when it becomes available. I believe we will one day have a completely free (as in speech) platform to run whatever Java applications we wish. His article actually piqued my interest in J2EE in general. There would be a bit of learning curve involved for me, since I'm an old school C programmer, but I may actually try my hand at picking up some Java. In my copious spare time, of course. ;-) The Linux Today article is at: http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-08-13-009-20-OP -- -Paul Iadonisi Senior System Administrator Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist Ever see a penguin fly? -- Try Linux. GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets ***************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *****************************************************************
