Re: org.gnu vs. gnu (was Re: Congratulations)
"John Keiser" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Frankly, there are only going to be a few major contributors whose toolkits are going to be *extremely* widely used, and GNU is probably one of them. Making it easy to type and use and think about (less mental friction) is a good thing. Although not necessarily what I think to be a good reason, using org.gnu would also hide 'gnu' from the top most level of a class directory structure and present less advertising benefits, if any exist in the first place. I don't think anyone is going to clobber 'gnu.*' given how it indeed is not what you'd expect if following the guidelines from Sun and there is little sense to the effort to change it at this point just as a company whose name changes probably won't change old code to new package names either, just speaking from personal experience there. Brian PS - I saw Tommy Davidson at Charlie Goodnight's yesterday evening and it was a blast. Hope everyone else had a great weekend. -- Brian Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Congratulations
It's not too late to change to "org.gnu" if one has the will. After all, Sun changed from "com.sun.java.swing" to "javax.swing". The change caused some disruption, but was a welcome one. Using "org.gnu" would also impress Java developers outside the Free Software fold. Java developers like the naming standards that Sun has initiated and consider the system to be A Good Thing. It's not a Sun-proprietary system, after all, just a good system that Sun happened to initiate. I know that no major catastrophe will result if the "gnu" prefix is retained. It's just that if the GNU packages follow a different convention from what the larger body of Java developers is used to, it would needlessly irritate many of the good Java developers it is meant for, and perhaps hinder the adoption of Classpath and contributions to it. I wouldn't like to see that happen for a silly reason that is easily fixed. So come on, guys, a little standardisation wouldn't hurt ;-). Ganesh C. Prasad Internet Development Services EDS Australia Level 5, 5 Hunter Street, Sydney NSW 2000 Tel: +61-2-9378 7568 -Original Message- From: Wes Biggs [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, September 13, 1999 10:16 AM To: Thomas J Lukasik Cc: Aaron M. Renn; Chris Toshok; Prasad, Ganesh C; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Congratulations Thomas J Lukasik wrote: Wes, You are obviously unaware of the document at: http://www.gnu.org/software/java/why-gnu-packages.txt I'm quite aware of it. Allow me to quote from it: Really, you'd have to ask Per for permission, but we'll assume, on the basis of his publicly stated opinions, that he won't go after you for copyright infringement. :-) "There is no measurable benefit of using org.gnu instead of gnu. I refuse to be concerned over anybody who might use gnu as a package prefix without co-ordinating with gnu.org - that's their problem, not ours." What does the statement "..that's there problem not ours." say about arrogance and ownership of 'GNU'? A "refusal to be concerned" is not a statement of ownership. I read it the other way -- go ahead and put your package under "gnu.*", if it causes a conflict, you figure it out. Per and I, we don't care one way or the other. Apathy's not the same as arrogance. You're entitled to your own opinion, and you're entitled to use "gnu.*" or "org.gnu.*" as you wish. Last time I checked, no one had filed a lawsuit for breach of Java package namespace. If you're paranoid, encrypt and seal your JAR. Wes
Re: Congratulations
So, who ever breaks the rules first gets the advantage? Your self-centered attitude pretty much sums up what is most objectionable about **any** organization that decides to ignore the common good and do whatever they want because they think for some reason that they are above it all. If that kind of attitude had been more prevalent over the last two decades then we would (as a community) never have not gotten as far as we have. Fortunately cooperation and adhering to de-facto standards has prevailed, so regarding your statement: "Per and I, we don't care one way or the other. Apathy's not the same as arrogance." Yeah, I guess I would have to agree that they are two different things, but one's no better than the other when folks are trying to build and maintain a healthy community. In fact apathy may be worse in the long run. -Original Message- From: Wes Biggs [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Thomas J Lukasik [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Aaron M. Renn [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Chris Toshok [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Prasad, Ganesh C [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sunday, September 12, 1999 8:26 PM Subject: Re: Congratulations Thomas J Lukasik wrote: Wes, You are obviously unaware of the document at: http://www.gnu.org/software/java/why-gnu-packages.txt I'm quite aware of it. Allow me to quote from it: Really, you'd have to ask Per for permission, but we'll assume, on the basis of his publicly stated opinions, that he won't go after you for copyright infringement. :-) "There is no measurable benefit of using org.gnu instead of gnu. I refuse to be concerned over anybody who might use gnu as a package prefix without co-ordinating with gnu.org - that's their problem, not ours." What does the statement "..that's there problem not ours." say about arrogance and ownership of 'GNU'? A "refusal to be concerned" is not a statement of ownership. I read it the other way -- go ahead and put your package under "gnu.*", if it causes a conflict, you figure it out. Per and I, we don't care one way or the other. Apathy's not the same as arrogance. You're entitled to your own opinion, and you're entitled to use "gnu.*" or "org.gnu.*" as you wish. Last time I checked, no one had filed a lawsuit for breach of Java package namespace. If you're paranoid, encrypt and seal your JAR. Wes
RE: org.gnu vs. gnu (was Re: Congratulations)
OK, here it is in writing: I am absolutely serious, "org.gnu" takes more energy than "gnu". But it's not about typing energy, it's about thinking energy, the minimization of which is (IMO) one of the principal factors in designing maintainable and reusable code, *especially* libraries. Having standards can reduce mental energy as well, but this particular standard has not helped me personally and does actually clash with my mental model of the use of libraries. (This is definitely a personal opinion thing.) It is not the four extra characters that presents the problem to me, but it is the bizarre naming convention. In my mind I do not associate libraries with the _domain names_ that created them, why *would* I? And then there's this weirdness with reversing the domain name (gnu.org - org.gnu). I do understand the rationale behind that, but it still goes against the normal ordering. In the end, commonly-used names should be descriptive of people's internal model. That is why software evolved past 'a1' and 'b1', but that is *also* why you don't use words like "the" in variable names (well, most of the time anyway). While they don't hurt, they don't help, and you later have to waste the mental energy throwing out the irrelevancies before you get to the program's meat. As to a globally unique identity, I am by no means suggesting that all packages everywhere do this, but GNU will end up with a pretty large namespace and is pretty easily recognizable ... I see no problem with its toolkits "usurping" the higher level name for itself. gnu is not a higher-level namespace that is likely to be reused by other corps., and it is not ugly, and does not waste mental energy. Again, I speak only for myself here. I think it's ugly. I truly do not know what "most people" think. --John Keiser -Original Message- From: Thomas J Lukasik [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sunday, September 12, 1999 9:19 PM To: John Keiser; Classpat 2 Subject: Re: org.gnu vs. gnu (was Re: Congratulations) What a ridiculous argument to defend the violation of a convention: because "it's four less characters to type" (only once at the top of the file no less!!) That has all of the merit of someone defending the going back to using variable names like 'a1', 'b1' and 'b2' because they are "less verbose". I think that the software development world has evolved way past you guys. Four 'extra' characters, one time in an import statement, in order to obtain a globally unique identity, and adhere to a convention accepted by the rest of the Java development community, is going to be "..a hell of a lot (harder)"?! C'mon, you can't be serious!! Tell me in writing that you're serious. -Original Message- From: John Keiser [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Classpat 2 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sunday, September 12, 1999 9:01 PM Subject: RE: org.gnu vs. gnu (was Re: Congratulations) Wow, didn't know this many people were alive and computing on Sundays :) My two cents: gnu.* is a hell of a lot easier to use and think about than org.gnu.*. I still think it looks silly to import com.sun like in JavaDoc. But I perfectly understand them putting stuff they *don't* want other people to use (or don't care) in com.sun.*. Sun gets to create public interfaces in java.*, why don't we get to create public interfaces in gnu.*? Frankly, there are only going to be a few major contributors whose toolkits are going to be *extremely* widely used, and GNU is probably one of them. Making it easy to type and use and think about (less mental friction) is a good thing. --John Keiser -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Thomas Down Sent: Sunday, September 12, 1999 5:58 PM To: Aaron M. Renn Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: org.gnu vs. gnu (was Re: Congratulations) "Aaron M. Renn" wrote: I'm opposed to org.gnu for the same reason that I hate email addresses of the form [EMAIL PROTECTED] It purports to be some type of globally unique identifier when in fact it is not. In the meantime, it requires names that are extremely verbose. At my last company we had two Gregory R. Barrett's. One of them ended up a gregory.r.barrett and the other at greg.r.barrett. It's like making your hash table really, really big in the hopes you won't have a collision. I'm not quite sure that follows... so long as each package has a defined owner who controls what goes in it, there should never be a namespace collision using the standard Java system. Okay, code-forks spoil this a little bit, but I think the principle still holds. Actually, I'd go so far as to say that one of the really cool things about Java is that it DOES encourage people to give every class a globally unique identifier, and this is a Good Thing for efficient code reuse. It's an unfortunate fact that it's hard to have useful unique
Re: org.gnu vs. gnu (was Re: Congratulations)
Hey, I've got a great solution. We start a "gnu" TLD to go along with "com", "org", etc. Problem solved, everyone's happy, we all find more constructive things to debate and/or get on with writing code. Wes
Re: org.gnu vs. gnu (was Re: Congratulations)
Wow. This is the most discussion we've had on any topic in a long time around here. This is the most ridiculous thing to have a flame war about ever. So I'll pledge to stop right here. Everyone else can send one more message if they want to. The vast bulk of what we are writing is in the java.* namespace where it should be. The rest is in gnu.* I personally don't see any value added to making the change to org.gnu right now, given that maybe five people total are using this code. The vast majority if the gnu.* packages are not part of Classpath at all, but rather are programs other people wrote and donated to GNU. I'm not ready to slam the door on org.gnu, but right now my priority is actually getting code done and working. -- Aaron M. Renn ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/
RE: org.gnu vs. gnu
OK, my parting thought: It does seem that a lot of people and companies are using this naming convention, which could make it a Good Thing, regardless of how screwed up it is. But while we don't need to decide now, I think we *do* need to decide before release. --John -Original Message- From: Aaron M. Renn [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, September 13, 1999 8:00 AM To: Wes Biggs Cc: Classpath Subject: Re: org.gnu vs. gnu (was Re: Congratulations) Wow. This is the most discussion we've had on any topic in a long time around here. This is the most ridiculous thing to have a flame war about ever. So I'll pledge to stop right here. Everyone else can send one more message if they want to. The vast bulk of what we are writing is in the java.* namespace where it should be. The rest is in gnu.* I personally don't see any value added to making the change to org.gnu right now, given that maybe five people total are using this code. The vast majority if the gnu.* packages are not part of Classpath at all, but rather are programs other people wrote and donated to GNU. I'm not ready to slam the door on org.gnu, but right now my priority is actually getting code done and working. -- Aaron M. Renn ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/
Re: org.gnu vs. gnu
Greetings, Fascinating. I wonder how loud the hue and cry would be if Microsoft decided to arbitrarily use a top-level package name 'microsoft.*' because of visibility 'advertising' purposes, and they think it's an arbitrary standard, and besides EVERYBODY knows who Microsoft is anyway... (For what it's worth, I don't know if they actually DO this anywhere, but I *DO* know that even they use com.ms (which is wrong, but at least closer) most of the time. If you want to talk the talk of following standards, you'd best walk the walk as well. This is a standard, and violating it just because you think it's arbitrary is...distinctly offensive at best. -- Morgan Schweers
Re: org.gnu vs. gnu
Morgan Schweers [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If you want to talk the talk of following standards, you'd best walk the walk as well. This is a standard, and violating it just because you think it's arbitrary is...distinctly offensive at best. We're all for standards around here... just not necessarily defacto standards. Feel free to submit a patch if you're truly offended. Brian -- Brian Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: org.gnu vs. gnu
John Keiser [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: But while we don't need to decide now, I think we *do* need to decide before release. Release? What's that? :) -- Paul Fisher * [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: org.gnu vs. gnu (was Re: Congratulations)
On Sun, Sep 12, 1999 at 11:13:37PM -0700, John Keiser wrote: OK, here it is in writing: I am absolutely serious, "org.gnu" takes more energy than "gnu". But it's not about typing energy, it's about thinking energy, the minimization of which is (IMO) one of the principal factors in designing maintainable and reusable code, *especially* libraries. Having standards can reduce mental energy as well, but this particular standard has not helped me personally and does actually clash with my mental model of the use of libraries. (This is definitely a personal opinion thing.) In my opinion gnu. _increases_ thinking energy involved. For most packages in the world, I can apply the simple algorithm 'reverse the domain name', but because the gnu people feel they are `special', I have to remember GNU as an exception to the rule and treat it specially. A waste of my time, and everybody else's time.
Re: org.gnu vs. gnu (was Re: Congratulations)
"It is not the four extra characters that presents the problem to me, but it is the bizarre naming convention. In my mind I do not associate libraries with the _domain names_ that created them, why *would* I? And then there's this weirdness with reversing the domain name (gnu.org - org.gnu). I do understand the rationale behind that, but it still goes against the normal ordering." Again, your argument is a bit off track. Domain names are used because they were there, and they worked. We aren't arguing that here. It's already been accepted by the community at large. And it's not at all about "your mind" or what "you understand", it's about the fact that a system is in place already and that ignoring it and "doing what you want, or like, or can understand" is not good for the next person. "I am by no means suggesting that all packages everywhere do this.." You see, there is that arrogance **again**. Why is any one organization so damn special that they should be excepted? "you later have to waste the mental energy throwing out the irrelevancies.." Why do you refer to the 'com.' or 'org.' qualifiers as "irrelevant"? They serve a very specific and important purpose: so that 'dataware.com' and 'dataware'org' and 'dataware.net' can all distribute code without namespace clashes. Is this simple concept really beyond your "understanding"? If you are comparing them to a superfluous 'the' in a variable name then perhaps you don't understand the fundamental issues here. And as far as that "wasting mental energy" goes, is it that scarce that you have to shorten your import statements to meet the demand? -Original Message- From: John Keiser [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Thomas J Lukasik [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Classpath [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, September 13, 1999 1:19 AM Subject: RE: org.gnu vs. gnu (was Re: Congratulations) OK, here it is in writing: I am absolutely serious, "org.gnu" takes more energy than "gnu". But it's not about typing energy, it's about thinking energy, the minimization of which is (IMO) one of the principal factors in designing maintainable and reusable code, *especially* libraries. Having standards can reduce mental energy as well, but this particular standard has not helped me personally and does actually clash with my mental model of the use of libraries. (This is definitely a personal opinion thing.) It is not the four extra characters that presents the problem to me, but it is the bizarre naming convention. In my mind I do not associate libraries with the _domain names_ that created them, why *would* I? And then there's this weirdness with reversing the domain name (gnu.org - org.gnu). I do understand the rationale behind that, but it still goes against the normal ordering. In the end, commonly-used names should be descriptive of people's internal model. That is why software evolved past 'a1' and 'b1', but that is *also* why you don't use words like "the" in variable names (well, most of the time anyway). While they don't hurt, they don't help, and you later have to waste the mental energy throwing out the irrelevancies before you get to the program's meat. As to a globally unique identity, I am by no means suggesting that all packages everywhere do this, but GNU will end up with a pretty large namespace and is pretty easily recognizable ... I see no problem with its toolkits "usurping" the higher level name for itself. gnu is not a higher-level namespace that is likely to be reused by other corps., and it is not ugly, and does not waste mental energy. Again, I speak only for myself here. I think it's ugly. I truly do not know what "most people" think. --John Keiser -Original Message- From: Thomas J Lukasik [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sunday, September 12, 1999 9:19 PM To: John Keiser; Classpat 2 Subject: Re: org.gnu vs. gnu (was Re: Congratulations) What a ridiculous argument to defend the violation of a convention: because "it's four less characters to type" (only once at the top of the file no less!!) That has all of the merit of someone defending the going back to using variable names like 'a1', 'b1' and 'b2' because they are "less verbose". I think that the software development world has evolved way past you guys. Four 'extra' characters, one time in an import statement, in order to obtain a globally unique identity, and adhere to a convention accepted by the rest of the Java development community, is going to be "..a hell of a lot (harder)"?! C'mon, you can't be serious!! Tell me in writing that you're serious. -Original Message- From: John Keiser [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Classpat 2 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sunday, September 12, 1999 9:01 PM Subject: RE: org.gnu vs. gnu (was Re: Congratulations) Wow, didn't know this many people were alive and computing on Sundays :) My two cents: gnu.* is a hell of a lot easier to use and think about than org.gnu.*. I still think it looks
Re: org.gnu vs. gnu (was Re: Congratulations)
I'm all for 'cutting the thread', but let me leave you with the observation that a "We can do whatever we please because we are who we are" attitude does not stink any less coming from "the GNU movement" than it does coming from Microsoft. That's my final comment (unless someone **begs** me to come out of retirement =8j) TJL -Original Message- From: Wes Biggs [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: John Keiser [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Thomas J Lukasik [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Classpath [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, September 13, 1999 2:10 AM Subject: Re: org.gnu vs. gnu (was Re: Congratulations) Hey, I've got a great solution. We start a "gnu" TLD to go along with "com", "org", etc. Problem solved, everyone's happy, we all find more constructive things to debate and/or get on with writing code. Wes
RE: org.gnu vs. gnu
I wonder how loud the hue and cry would be if Microsoft decided to arbitrarily use a top-level package name 'microsoft.*' I would have no problem with it, but... but I *DO* know that even they use com.ms (which is wrong, but at least closer) I have a real problem with this, because they've screwed the Morgan Stanley Group's implicit claim to that package name (see whois ms.com). Creating one's own top-level package name doesn't have that side-effect.
