GNU classpath 0.09

[Michael Koch]

Hi Elliotte,


I just read your news about the recent GNU classpath 0.09 release. I'm 
the one who wrote most of the java.nio, javax.print and javax.imageio 
stuff in GNU classpath. I'm astonished about your writing. In your text 
you wrote:

" It also delegates much of java.io to java.nio, which strikes me as a 
colossally bad idea. java.nio really only works well for certain 
important but still special purpose cases. It tends to be slower than 
regular I/O for basic operations with small files. I wonder if 
anyonne's actually profiled this?"

This somehow shows that you dont know the internals we have changed in 
GNU classpath 0.09. You have not made any profiling work and assume 
that things that may be right for other java.nio implementations apply 
to GNU classpath's implementation too.

Before the change of java.io the classes FileInputStream, 
FileOutputStream and RandomAccessFile in java.io redirected all his 
calls to native methods in FileDescriptor. This class did all the hard 
IO work. Now all these native methods where moved to 
gnu.java.nio.channels.FileChannelImpl and the above three classes call 
these directly instead. I really wonder why this should make java.io 
slower just because the methods were moved to another class ?

From the text I quoted above I assume you have done no profiling or you 
would know that it is not significant slower. You just apply your 
experience with another implementation on GNU classpath.

Another thing I want to mention is that GNU classpath is NOT licensed 
under LGPL. Its licensed under GPL+exception. Thats a big difference as 
it allows the usage of GNU classpath in szenarious where LGPL would not 
allow it. LGPL doesnt allows e.g. static linking,  with the LGPL you 
have to distribute things in a way that lets you replace the LGPL part 
easily (so in practice that usually means the LGPL code must be in 
an .so).

That is just my opinion about this news item and this mail is meant as 
an offence against you or anyone else. It would be nice to make this 
clear on your website cafeaulait as people might get opinions about GNU 
classpath that are just wrong.


Cheers,
Michael