GNU Classpath/Harmony goals

[Mark Wielaard <ma...@klomp.org>]

Hi,

On Sat, 2005-07-16 at 07:08 +0200, Sven de Marothy wrote:
> I consider this to be FUD and propaganda. Some may be done with malice;
> some of it is just ignorance, but the effect is the same: It's harming
> the attempts being made to cooperate with Harmony. 
> 
> The Harmony project's aims and goals are unclear enough without lots of
> misinformation about Classpath's. 
> 
> I suggest that from now on we let Mark Wielaard, and him only, speak on
> ANY issue regarding Classpath licensing or politics on this list. (I
> won't comment further myself, either.) Ok?
> 
> I'll repeat that: Please disregard ANY and ALL statements on the
> Classpath license or project goals unless it's coming from Mark. 

:) I hope you won't regret this.

But like nobody can claim to speak for all of Harmony. I cannot claim to
speak for the GNU Classpath project as a whole. Even though I am the GNU
Classpath Maintainer I cannot claim to speak for every individual
cooperating with the project. I hope I do of course. And I know the
other hackers will let me know when I say something stupid.

For those that don't know what it means to be a GNU maintainer. It
mainly is making sure all paperwork is in order, that there is a good
integration with the rest of the GNU project, that the FSF is contacted
for any legal/paperwork issues and to keep an eye on the maintainability
of the project in the long run. Basically it is just making sure the
project follows the GNU Maintainers Guide:
http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/

I do think the goals of GNU Classpath are much clearer at the moment
then the Harmony goals. We are all still figuring out what Harmony is
really about, what the goals and policies should be for harmony. But the
goals of GNU Classpath should be clear from our project website and
hacker documentation:
http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/
http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/docs/hacking.html

I can try to put down what the essence of GNU Classpath is:

GNU Classpath is a community of developers that work together as
individual, corporate, research and university hackers to provide a Free
Software core library implementation for the java programming language.
GNU Classpath cooperates with a large number of projects by defining and
providing support structures, code and interfaces to provide a fully
Free Software development environment, including compilers, runtimes,
different execution mechanisms and innovative integration with other
languages, libraries and tools. Although the main goal of GNU Classpath
is to provide a fully integrated library for the GNU platform we do want
to cooperate and share the effort with others. Therefore GNU Classpath
is a Free Software commons under the guardianship of the FSF to make
sure that it is possible to build upon, use and distribute larger works
based on GNU Classpath under their license of choice and to make sure
that the core classes provided by GNU Classpath themselves provide users
with the freedoms that the GPL guarantees.

I happen to think these goals overlap nicely with the harmony goals.
Which is why I don't think discussion about goals, objectives and
policies are completely off-topic on this list. Where there is a
difference in goals, objectives and policies between the projects that
want to cooperate with both the GNU Classpath and Harmony communities we
should discuss if they can be alligned, and when they are not how we can
build bridges between them.

Cheers,

Mark