FC4 slimfast slimfest

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le lundi 21 février 2005 à 22:58 -0500, Gerald Henriksen a écrit :

>Perhaps most importantly though is that Novell is pushing Mono (C#)
>and Red Hat is pushing Java.  If Red Hat doesn't even include Java in
>Fedora then that compromises the Red Hat message.  Is this advocacy?
>Yes.   But sometimes you just can't avoid it.

Moreover Red Hat pushes *free* java, and there are precious few other
supporters.

At one point you have to be realistic - if you want linux to keep the
traction it currently has in the server/entreprise space (traction of
which FC is a direct side effect) you need a high-level langage with
rich libraries such as java. If you want this successful linux to be
free that includes the high-level langage stack itself. For this to
happen someone that cares about the free part and has a large developer
mindshare must release this stack in a form that does not require days
of installations to start coding. Right now that means RH+FC+gcj.

Sure you can cull java. Users won't care. Don't come back crying by
FC5/6 time when RHEL goes closed java, FC has to accept mono, the free
java stacks fades like blackdown, and a lot of talented people that
contributed to it are lost to the FOSS movement (getting free java to
the level it is now is no small feat, the easy way is just to accept
being herded by Sun and big vendors, if after all this work an
emblematic Linux player like Red Hat closes the door I can imagine a lot
of people will give up in disgust).

One of the reasons I like FC (and Red Hat Linux before that) is it dares
taking difficult decisions like going full UTF-8, testing SELinux,
knowing the eventual result is worth the pain of including stuff no one
tried before. I'd be disappointed if FC where to lose that long-term
view and refuse to include stuff because it's not mainstream yet.
Without early adopters like FC Linux development will slow down
drastically.

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot
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