Stallman lamenting that GCJ and ClassPath are still (read: eternally) catching up ...

Tue Apr 13 18:33:00 GMT 2004

--- Dalibor Topic <robilad@kaffe.org> wrote:
> It is *still* catching up in some areas, unfortunately. How much that 
> matters depends on your interests, but in some areas there is quite some 
> way to go [1], till GNU Classpath can claim to have a complete 
> implementation of JDK 1.4 libraries. In others, GNU Classpath is already 
> 100% there. But that's O.K., in my opinion, the missing bits will be 
> covered as well eventually. And then Sun will release 1.5 and we'll play 
> catchup again.

In terms of "useful things it can do", gcj is ahead of Sun in some ways, is it not? The license
and the ability to compile to native exectuables, for example. Does gcj support more
architectures? If it did, that would be worth singing about. It would be a good piece of
advocacy to generate a more complete list of things gcj can do that Sun can't. It would also be
nice to have some testimonials about how someone was able to solve a problem using gcj that they
couldn't using Sun's JDK.
>> I see Richard's post as a way [2] of introducing a new audience how far 
> GNU Classpath has come, inviting them to try it out for their apps, and 
> dip into the pool of free software java runtimes. If more people from 
> the Java open source world read the article and try out their 
> applications and libraries with GNU Classpath based runtimes, report the 
> bugs they find, and eventually submit bug-fixes and become GNU Classpath 
> developers themselves, then we're all in for the better.

That was my take on it also. Stallman's article was pretty good. Part of it did seem more like a
plea for help though (help us before the forces of evil extinguish us once and for all! we are so
fragile!), when it could have sounded like a "look what we can do and they can't" piece.
On another note, java has more APIs and classes in its standard libraries than a dog has fleas. I
wonder how many of those classes are used by most java projects/programmers out there?
Chris Marshall

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