you are in a maze of twisty java-clone projects, all alike

Posted Nov 14, 2006 23:59 UTC (Tue) by mjw (subscriber, #16740)
In reply to: you are in a maze of twisty java-clone projects, all alike by JoeBuck
Parent article: Apache project keeps pace with Java changes (ZDNet)

Actually there are already 20-odd java-like projects :) But the twist here is that they are all specialisations of one kind or another based on the core GNU Classpath libraries and tools.

Strangely enough Harmony! was actually started by this same group of people as a way to also include the Apache group. Sadly then IBM walked in and it all took a different path. I wrote a guest article for LWN about that a while ago, Towards a free Java, explaining some of the difficulties faced back then and how the 20-odd projects came together around GNU Classpath over the years merging their code bases more and more. With a little analysis why our harmony effort back then failed to work out.

The consensus on Planet Classpath seems to be that we all would very much like to work together and colaborate with Sun on all this. Something made possible by Sun's very bold move to pick the GPL plus GNU Classpath exception for their OpenJDK project. Thanks for sharing Sun. That is what we call Harmony! :)