Re: CORBA

[Stephen Crawley]

Dalibor,

You should be arguing with the OMG, not with me.  On second thoughts,
that would be a mistake.  The typical OMG representative is likely to
dismiss the kind of arguments you just made as idealistic claptrap.
If you want corporate types to listen to you, you have to talk their
language.

Re: the clean-room and copyright issues, it is not just an issue of
what you or I think is reasonable.  If there is even a POSSIBILITY
that a reimplementation of the org.omg interfaces might be raise the
ire of the OMG, then we need to be VERY CAUTIOUS.  At least clear it
with FSF legal. 

> Classpath doesn't do badges yet :)

"Yet" being the operative word, I think.  If we are serious about
helping people break out of the Sun trap, we are going to have to
find a way to get a "badge" for Classpath from Sun.  If customers
cannot see proof (in the form of a "badge") that a Classpath-based 
VM passes the Sun JCK, they could just be exchanging one trap for 
another one by switching VMs.

> More poetically spoken, as GNU Classpath is in the trap-smashing 
> business, it would be a bit self-refuting to exchange the shackles of 
> the Java trap for the shackles of the CORBA trap, if there is such a 
> trap. :)

... which suggests yet another option:

5) avoid the CORBA trap by removing all CORBA support from Classpath.
Retain our idealogical purity, and let the J2EE crowd be damned to
the hell of proprietary JVMs.  SEP.

For the record, I actually agree with most of what you are saying ...
wearing my idealist hat.  But if the aim is to find a practical solution
to this problem, we are going to have to compromise somewhere.  If that
entails "kowtowing" to somebody, then maybe we need to be prepared to
get our collective foreheads down into the dirt!!

-- Steve