Re: [gentoo-java] Java going GPL; Stallman approves -- News at 11:00

[Karl Trygve Kalleberg <karltk@gentoo.org>]

David Herron wrote:
> Karl, I agree completely.
> 
> We have been looking at this question for some time.  Clearly in the JDK
> sources we have code that supports Linux, and we have code which
> supports SPARC, but not these two at the same time.  It turns out to be
> a little difficult to bring those two together.

I appreciate the engineering difficulties here, but I don't think they
are insurmountable given some time, motivation and elbow grease.

> I would think that in the not too far distant future there could be
> project(s) like you say working together in the openjdk project to
> support the JDK on new architectures and maybe new operating systems. 
> e.g. The Free BSD team and that ilk might want to collaborate with us
> more directly now that our licenses are more open.
> 
> How would *you* prefer that the collaboration would work?
> 
> I know our preference is for the collaboration to be in the bounds of
> the openjdk project site.  The governance and contribution procedures
> are a work in progress at the moment.  You can see on the openjdk
> project site the contribution process.  So, e.g., if you had a
> Gentoo-specific source change to make, you could submit it through that
> contribution process.

My experience with other projects, such as Eclipse, tells me that it
would be preferable to have one common repository upstream (that's with
you guys) for collecting and sharing patches used in the packaging process.

It turns out that many patches used by distro A are also very useful for
 distro B -- this is a pretty established fact by now. Another
established fact is that we (the package maintainers on various distros)
spend a lot of time digging through each other's repos and home pages
looking for interesting patches for common problems. This is pure waste
of time.

With Eclipse, we're combating this with a new project, see
http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/linux-distro/

Basically, the Eclipse Linux Distro project is a staging ground for
fixes/patches/improvements to Eclipse that are specific to Linux (I
don't think we're against *BSD in any way -- they've just not been part
of the process so far).

The patches that end up in the Eclipse "Linux Distro" project will not
be automatically placed into the main Eclipse code base. They will most
likely simmer in the Eclipse Linux Distro for some time, and during that
time, it's up to the various distros whether they want to apply it or not.

Some patches might eventually make it into the main Eclipse code base,
many won't. But even for those that won't, chances are that they'll be
maintained as the main Eclipse code base evolves, since they are often
shared across distros, and because maintainers from the various distros
have accesss to the Linux Distro code base.

Perhaps a similar model will work for the JDK (which is our primary
concern ATM -- other projects like J2EE might follow), say a "JDK Linux
Distro" subproject of the OpenJDK.

However, it is vitally important to keep the barriers for accessing and
working on the code base in such a JDK Linux Distro low. I wouldn't mind
having to sign the necessary CAs to commit to the JDK Linux Distro
subproject, but I *would* mind if some Sun engineer needs to bless my
code every time I have a patch to share with the other packagers. "Patch
blessing" should only be necessary when code is taken from the JDK Linux
Distro staging ground and put into the OpenJDK proper.


Since the Eclipse Linux Distro project is still in its infancy, it's too
early to tell how well this model works, but if I were in the Sun JDK
team, I'd keep an eye out for it and see how well it turns out to work.

"A beginning is a very delicate time", as some fictitious princess once
said.


Cheers,

-- Karl T
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