OpenJDK on Solaris Dev Express 1/2008?

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi Erik,

On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 05:23 -0700, Erik Trimble wrote:
> Andrew John Hughes wrote:
> > 2008/6/4 Kelly O'Hair <Kelly.Ohair at sun.com>:
> >   
> >> Not sure what you mean by the Sun Studio trap.
> >
> > I'm referring back to the Java trap - before Sun released their JDK
> > under the GPL,
> > it was possible to have applications under a Free Software license
> > written in Java
> > which couldn't be run in a Free environment because they would only work under
> > the proprietary JDK.  GNU Classpath was the community's attempt to free Java
> > from this trap.
> >
> > Only being able to build the OpenJDK using the proprietary Sun Studio
> > compiler on Solaris creates
> > a similar issue, though the scope of the problem is fortunately more
> > restricted.  I'm not sure OpenSolaris
> > itself can even be built with GCC, which is an even worse issue - it's
> > not truly Free Software if it can only
> > be built with proprietary tools.
> >
> >   
> This is NOT a trap.  This is a CHOICE OF PREFERENCE made by the FS 
> Community.  It is no more a trap than using GPL'd programs in 
> conjunction with the Apache http server is.

I don't think the point was about different free software licenses at
all. That is as you say just a choice of preference of which free
software license a community choices to use as default. In general free
software hackers seem pretty open minded about these things in my
experience.

>    Just because we don't play 
> exactly in your world doesn't mean there is a trap.  Traps are when you 
> cannot replace a whole component layer easily with something else.

Where that something else is also free software of course.

>   So, 
> if your GPL'd Java program had to run on a Sun JDK under Solaris, that 
> would certainly be true.  However, you can run your Java program on one 
> of about 4 major JDKs now, under over a dozen OSes, so that hardly 
> qualifies as a trap.

It certainly seems a lesser trap, since it only impacts users of systems
like solaris and windows that are already non-free. But we now do have
OpenJDK and we do want it to be truly free for all users. It is
questionable whether Windows will ever be completely liberated (but it
might happen ultimately trough Wine and cygwin/mingw). But for
OpenSolaris it seems within reach right now, if we wouldn't be relying
on a proprietary toolchain on that platfrom. I agree with Andrew that
using a proprietary compiler instead of a free one (whether that is
distributed under a BSD, GPL or Apache style license) seems like trouble
in the long run. It is ultimately the same kind of trap if you are
relying on extensions of a proprietary toolchain, then you are not
giving your users real freedom. If at all possible, and if we can find
volunteers to do it of course, it would be beneficial to use a free
toolchain on all platforms that OpenJDK support imho.

Cheers,

Mark