Hi,
Richard Stallman wrote:
I'm proposing that we decide on long-term intentional cooperation, to
assure that future versions of OpenOffice.org completely work with
future versions of GCJ and GNU Classpath.
To ensure that JREs from different vendors work with OOo, these points
are important:
- JREs provide class libraries compatible to Sun JRE at a given version.
- JREs provide a JNI interface compatible to Sun JRE at a given version.
- OOo is capable to use them.
While the first two issues are fulfilled (at least for 1.3.1 I suppose),
the latter may not. This is due to the fact that there is no STANDARD of
how a VM can be obtained from an installed JRE. Therfore the "interested
parties" need to fiddle around with OOo to make their JRE work. While
this may work for the moment, because we provided a framework for easier
adaption of JREs, it is quite shortsighted. Currently it is a nightmare
for a native application to use JREs from different vendors. Please see
my post here:
http://tools.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=jdk&msgNo=148
So IMHO for every application developer it is currently best in terms of
spend effort and time (yes there are projects where this is important
[sorry for the sarcasm]) to decide for one JRE and drop everything else.
The fact that the developers and advocates of all those JREs are eager
to have OOo support there product is a big plus for OOo. But would they
be willing to support an unknown number of other native applications
with the same enthusiam and endurance? This need not be answered because
we all know that this support does not come for free (that is, it takes
TIME).
So the question is, do those JRE vendors make an effort to integrate
with OOo in order get a part of the fame or would they be willing to
find a generic solution for ALL native applications? In case of the
latter, far more software projects could benefit from it.
I would be glad to know how other developers think about this.
Kind regards,
Joachim Lingner
Roberto Salomon wrote:
The results of the talks is that FAMEG will start a research
project regarding the compilation and use of OpenOffice.org with free
Java platforms, probably as of next semester.
That will help a lot. Please put me in touch with Professor Emmerich,
and I will introduce him to the developers of GCJ and GNU Classpath.
However, I think that it remains important to have an intentional
cooperation between us and the developers of OpenOffice.org.
Kay Ramme's message shows what the issue is:
One of the goals for OpenOffice.org is interoperability based on
standards - this explicitly includes Java specifications. As stated in
our policies OpenOffice.org developers are urged to use official APIs
only.
There are lots and lots of official Java APIs. Thus, following this
policy, there will always be the potential for new versions of
OpenOffice.org to drastically and surprisingly fail to work with GJC
and GNU Classpath.
We could eliminate this possibility if the developers of all these
packages talk together about any additional API to be used.
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