[arch-dev-public] java licensing issues

[Jan de Groot]

On Fri, 2007-06-01 at 13:02 -0700, Jason Chu wrote:

> > Looks promising, but it still leaves us with an outdated jdk/jre full of
> > bugs which are fixed already in the commercial version. Also, I wouldn't
> > know how to run sun's JDK on archppc for example, something which is
> > possible with the GNU java framework we have.
> 
> It's what we use right now with i686.  That's why I didn't want to package
> 6u1 because they haven't released it under the dlj license.

We don't make it inaccessible though. We will force packages to
makedepend on GNU java, but for runtime, you're free to use sun,
blackdown or whatever java. We just don't install it by default, since
we want to use a free java without license restrictions.

> > About broken projects: we will test which ones will work tomorrow. At
> > least the Sun compiler suite is broken with it because they do hardcoded
> > version checks, but that one is broken anyways because glibc contains C
> > ++ code in the C headers which works fine in gcc but breaks in the sun
> > compiler ;). This gcc-gcj release looks very solid to me, there
> > shouldn't be any problem running eclipse with it for example (hey, gcj
> > is compiled by eclipse ;)).
> 
> I'm more worried about software that comes precompiled, like cgoban2.  Not
> being able to play go on any computer, wherever I am, at any time would
> just destroy me! ;)

cgoban2 works fine with GNU java (tested it). GNU java really improved a
lot since it's the only way for distributions like redhat, ubuntu and
debian to provide a free java on all architectures.