On Sun, 2005-06-05 at 06:25 -0300, Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote: > On Jun 4, 2005, at 12:59 PM, Sven de Marothy wrote: > > AFAIK there are > > no other class libraries out there which you'll legally be able to > > distribute with Harmony. So why create flexibility when there aren't > > options? > > > > Are you kidding? There aren't options *now* (well, that's not really > true, is it...),
Could you elaborate on that? I don't know of any class library distributable under the Apache license. > but that doesn't meant that options won't come > around in the future. I think we're still in the very beginning of > "managed runtime environments" and generalization w/o penalty is a > Good Thing(tm). Reimplementing java.lang certainly is a penalty. Again, this is NOT a major issue. *If* or *when* these options become available, *that* will be the time to adress this. It is not such a major task as folks seem to think here to change the VM-classlib interface. Indeed it has been done already for VMs such as JikesRVM. Reimplementing java.lang is more work. > And maybe we have more to learn in this area from other > implementations and newer Java APIs. I don't like "maybe"s. I like specific problems for which I can devise specific solutions. Maybe Java 1.6 will require VMs to be able to make breakfast; Should we start designing a VM-toaster interface, just in case? > > Why would you want to have a Free VM which can use non-free libraries? > > > > why not? Why restrict that freedom for users? 1) Because Sun hasn't documented their VM interface. 2) Because people who have Sun's class library already have Sun's VM. What would they want with Harmony for? 3) Because I thought the main idea was a complete VM under the Apache license. Not ASL+SCSL. /Sven
