Opensource plugin&webstart - when?

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi Clemens,

On Wed, 2009-08-26 at 12:40 -0400, Clemens Eisserer wrote:
> I just can't understand the reason of holding those two components
> back

It isn't clear what is going on. After saying Sun was committed to
releasing the code as Free Software, at conferences, blogs and on the
mailinglists, nothing happened for 6 months. The only communication
since has been "circumstances changed". Nobody knows which circumstances
those are or what changed however. So, for all we know they are still
committed, just delayed. Lets just hope the delay isn't going to be
multiple years. Or that someone from Sun explains what is really going
on now after the commitment and what the expected timeline is.

> So it seems to old catch-up game continues again, with
> half-"compatible" implementations arround, hurting java's reputation
> and user experience.

I think that isn't doing the free alternative justice, compatibility is
of a huge concern. Please do report any bugs you might find. From my own
experience any bugs are taken seriously and patched quickly. All
GNU/Linux distros now ship the IcedTea plugin, so at least across free
platforms things should be pretty compatible.

If history is our guide then improving the GNU implementations till they
are at least as good, or threaten to surpass the proprietary
implementations will trigger proprietary companies into opening op and
working with the community more.

Cheers,

Mark