On Jun 5, 2005, at 9:32 PM, Peter Donald wrote:
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 thought that was a base assumption of the project - that a modular
architecture provides ways for different implementations to
interoperate.
Goal #2 from the proposal :
"2) create a community-developed modular runtime (VM and class library)
architecture to allow independent implementations to share runtime
components, and allow independent innovation in runtime components"
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.
Or write their own class libraries for whatever reason.
Consider IBM - There are a few people here (both active and
lurkers) that are IBMers.
I'm an IBM-er but can't and won't comment on IBMs position on this.
(I work in a completely different area of the company. It's a big
company...)
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.
Yes - exactly.
geir
---
Cheers,
Peter Donald
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Geir Magnusson Jr +1-203-665-6437
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