Free Java (was Database for "average" users)

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, May 09, 2005 at 10:55:22PM +1000, Andrew Cowie wrote:
> Debian being the only significant exception. RHEL, Fedora, Gentoo, etc
> all have Java easy to use in the mainline distro.

Java isn't (currently) available "free".

You can install the debian package 'java-package' and then use make-jpkg
on a file downloaded from sun and it will generate a nice .deb from the
sun file you downloaded.  Works very nicely actually.

If you have a problem with that, complain to sun, or help people finish
the free java implementations.

After all what is java good for really?

Of course when java really works in jikes/kaffe/gcj then debian will
move java stuff into main and consider it perfectly nice and free.

> [And, although it's not free by Debian's definition (the problem mostly
> being restrictions around redistribution), Sun's JVM is nevertheless
> freely available, and works VERY well, thank you very much. For a large
> footprint, long running, heavy load server instance I wouldn't choose
> anything but.]

Sun's JVM is also NOT redistributable or repackageable without explicit
permission, which makes it non-free by Debian distribution standards
since they would need permission to package it up and distribute it, and
even then the end user wouldn't be able to redistribute the package to
others.

> As for free java, it is a reality, and it works quite well for most
> situations. In particular, GCJ's ability to compile to native
> executables is brilliant.
> 
> That is also inaccurate.
> 
> A significant issue for any Java implementation is compatibility, and
> I'm pleased to report the observation that those doing third party Java
> implementations have been *very* scrupulous to stick to the defined Java
> standard.
> 
> GCJ 3.4 gets to "rather good" and the recently released GCJ 4.0 (part of
> GCC 4.0) has outstanding coverage and compatibility and indeed can quite
> rightly claim to be a 1.4.2 JDK.

It can?  Hmm, sounds useful.  When it was 1.2 or 1.3 compatible a lot of
things required 1.4 (not that any java developers ever seem to get the
clue that telling the user this in the docs would be a nice thing to
do).  Of course a lot of things probably expect 1.5 now.

Lennart Sorensen
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