[no subject]

> On the other hand, some people don't care about Java source, and only care
> that there's a JDK for their platform.  This is the blackdown.org
> philosophy.  I'm sure they'd opt for an open-source license if they could, but
> they can't so they settle for the restrictions of the SCSL, especially since
> Sun licensed them the JCK for free (which is Sun's "support" of the blackdown
> project.)  Having a closed-source JDK is better than no JDK in their eyes,
> which is also a perfectly valid point.

Agreed.  Sun has received overwhelming interest in a supported JDK for
Linux; they are going about it by helping the blackdown folks.  Linux
users should appreciate what they've done.  After all the JDK is
commercial software and closed source.

Anyone who doesn't like their policy doesn't have to use Sun's software...

> ...and here's where I get back on topic for this list. :)  If you want a
> truly free JDK for the Alpha, you want either Kaffe or Japhar.  Kaffe seems
> to be further along than Japhar.  (Does Japhar even run at all on the Alpha?
> I haven't played with it.)

...and fortunately there are alternatives.  Kaffe didn't work well when I
tried it, and I don't know anything about Japhar.  I've been experimenting
with Cygnus' gcj for a couple of months though, and I'm very pleased with
this software.  It's a natural fit for anyone experienced with gcc/egcs.
It's not a bytecode interpreter, but that doesn't matter at all to me (it
can compile .class -> .o or .java -> .o, so it can still run third-party
classes).  It's also not production-quality and there are no stable
releases yet, but it is progressing very well.  I will soon be running
"real" applications with it.  (And, most importantly, it builds/runs on
Alpha/Linux!)

> Some people don't like Kaffe, though, since the license holder is Transvirtual,
> which also licenses Kaffe under a proprietary commercial license.  In fact,
> there are effectively two Kaffe codebases:  the GPL version and the
> Transvirtual version.  Transvirtual keeps the two trees strictly separate,
> so the noise you hear about Microsoft paying Transvirtual to make proprietary
> MS extensions to Kaffe does *not* affect the GPL version of the code.  You
> can contribute to the GPL version without agreeing to assign your code over to
> Transvirtual for use in their product.

Cygnus is a commercial company too... like Transvritual, they offer two
licences for their software.  Unlike Transvirtual they have one codebase
for both.  I have no problem with either company... having open source
available is extremely liberating, especially if you've been using Sun's
software too long ;)

> Unfortunately, Kaffe is not as far along on the Alpha as it is on Intel.  The
> JIT does not work on the Alpha, and a few other things need work.  Still,
> progress is being made.  I do use Kaffe as the JVM for the Servlet engine I
> have running on my home machine, so it does run, it's just not blazing fast.

True.  It is extremely difficult to build a quality JIT compiler
for any platform, and both the "free" VMs and the blackdown porters suffer
compared to commercially-available JDKs, especially on Intel.  It bothers
me that I develop on Alpha, the best price/performance around (IMHO), but
can't run Java code nearly as well as my NT/Intel friends can.  I started
looking for alternatives to JIT technology, that's when I discovered
native Java compilers are already available... I used Toba before gcj
(Toba is unfortunately no longer developed).  My Alpha no longer has to be
embarassed ;)

--
Jeff Sturm
jsturm1@home.com