Hi,
It seems like there is a little bit of heat being generated by this
topic due to confusion. While Geir has not actually stated this anywhere
I assume that the reason that he is advocating for a VM interface that
is independent of GNU Classpath is because he has plans to interoperate
with other class libraries.
I assume that if the Harmony JVM gets half as good as is hoped there
will be companys who want to adopt the JVM but continue to use Suns
class library so that differences in libraries don't hurt their customers.
Consider IBM - There are a few people here (both active and lurkers)
that are IBMers. They have publicly showed support for an open source
JVM on numerous occasions and I am sure they would benefit considerably
(as would Harmony) if this project was to get to that stage. However I
suspect that it is likely that they want to stick with a derivative of
Suns rt.jar for the moment. The reason being that their customers do not
want to be exposed to differences between rt.jar and GNU Classpath.
Given that IBM has already re-written large chunks of the JVM I suspect
that over time they may move piecemeal to an OSS class library - at a
pace at which they can verify it matches Suns behaviour.
Another possibility would be the people from Brazil who are starting
their own JVM and I would not be surprised if at some point someone
wants to reimplement the class library using with a ASL/MIT or other
license with fewer restrictions.
I could be wrong but I guess the idea is to keep the options open and
encourage collaboration with both big buisness and other OSS projects.
---
Cheers,
Peter Donald
*------------------------------------------------*
| You can't wake a person who is pretending |
| to be asleep. -Navajo Proverb. |
*------------------------------------------------*
