Re: Linux Kongress 2003 in Saarbruecken, Germany

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi,

On Wed, 2003-07-16 at 10:51, Sascha Brawer wrote:
> Here's a draft for an extended abstract, see below. Any comments

In general be careful of your use of the word java. We don't want to
give the impression that we implement java, which is a trademarked word
used to describe particular (proprietary) implementations. That is why
we call the project GNU Classpath, essential libraries for the java
language or something similar descriptive.
See also http://www.fsf.org/prep/standards_5.html

You should also mention that some dedicated people have been working on
GNU Classpath for the last five years. That explains why we are as far
as we are now. Consistently doing little steps for a couple of years
does work to make progress.

> Would anyone be interested in doing the talk together?

I can certainly act as the lovely assistant who does the demos :)

> IMHO, it would be great if there also were
> separate talks about the VMs.

I would like to see talks about:

- Kaffe, the NetBSD of VMs (we show you what portability means)
- GCJ, doing it the traditional way
  (or how to generate the fasted code on earth)
- JRVM, implementing the difficult stuff in an easy language.
- IKVM.NET, cooperation and integration in the extreme.

> Also, would anyone be interested in a BoF session about Java graphics?
> What other talks/BoFs do people have in mind?

I really want to spend some time the next couple of months on Mauve or
just tests in general and on making the VM interface even more abstract.
Both topics would be nice to evaluate with some people.

And from the meeting in Karlsruhe I got the impression that people would
be interested in some common (native) library format to reuse the output
of a ahead of time or just in time compiler. (BTW found the paper that I
mentioned: http://flint.cs.yale.edu/flint/publications/bincomp.html)

> GNU Classpath -- Freedom for Java [FIXME: Is the title too snappy?]

"Freedom to Innovate" :)

Seriously. I think GNU Classpath is the boring project. It is what it
enables people do with it that makes it so exciting! Having people
create big complex free programs on top of it like Eclipse
(http://www.eclipse.org/) or XWT (http://www.xwt.org/) is nice. And
writing application in an easy language for the GNOME framework is
really productive. And we are also the catalyst for all these cool
VM/Compiler projects mentioned above. Giving people the freedom to do
these kinds of innovative things without them being
controlled/sanctioned by someone is why I think GNU Classpath is
meaningful.

Cheers,

Mark