doing the TCK dance with Sun: step one

[Dalibor Topic]

Hi all,

after talking a lot with Sun's Onno Kluyt and Bruno Souza from Javali 
during the runtime summit in Boston, I decided to see how honest Sun was 
with their claims of opening up the compatibility test suite for Java 5 
and allowing a free software implementation of the runtime and the class 
libraries to be compatible with Sun's implementation.

I'm mostly interested in having access to TCK to be able to more easily 
spot and fix the incomatibilities between Kaffe/Classpath that prevent 
nice free software written in Java from working out of the box with nice 
free runtimes. So I expect the results of such an effort to end up being 
helpful to all free runtimes, rather than just Kaffe, by making it 
easier to run more free software out of the box on GNU Classpath.

Alas, I have done the first step, and applied for 'qualified individual' 
access to the TCK for Java 5. The next step is a decision from the TCK 
scholarship board about the validity of my application.

The next step, then, will be to negotiate the actual terms with Sun. I 
have no idea at the moment what the actual terms of access to the TCK 
Sun will propose to me, so I can't say what the collaboration mode is 
going to look like. I also don't know if Sun will actually propose 
acceptable terms, but I guess that, if they are seriously interested in 
compatibility, they will. I'll keep you updated as this application 
moves on.

I've put up my application online on my blog on advogato[1], and I'll 
talk about all this during the Kaffe talk at FOSDEM.

Don't put your hopes too high, though. Sun's TCK is not free software, 
so it is not a suitable replacement for Mauve, the free software testing 
kit. Don't wait for Sun to grant access to their TCK on 
non-discriminatory terms, that might never happen. Please continue 
hacking on Mauve and making it better than the non-free test suite in 
every respect, just like GNU Classpath does the same for class libraries.

cheers,
dalibor topic

[1] http://www.advogato.org/person/robilad/diary.html?start=64