Subject: Re: JDK / NetBSD
To: Scott Bartram <scottb@orionsoft.com>
From: Scott Ellis <scotte@warped.com>
List: current-users
Date: 01/03/2000 21:45:52
Thanks for the continued work on JDK for NetBSD!  Any chance of an ELF
version for i386 (read: one for -current rather than 1.4.x)?

    Scott Ellis

----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Bartram" <scottb@orionsoft.com>
To: "Simon J. Gerraty" <sjg@zen.cdn.telstra.com.au>
Cc: <frank@wins.uva.nl>; <sjq@quick.com.au>; <current-users@netbsd.org>
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2000 8:44 PM
Subject: Re: JDK / NetBSD


> There is a release candidate version of 1.1.8 for the i386 platform at
> ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/misc/java/i386/1.1.8/
> (Sorry I didn't get around to an announcement before the holiday...)
>
> The recent press releases by Sun regarding the J2SE platform and
> licensing/royalties are a little confusing. I'm trying to get
> clarification directly from Sun on royalty-free binary distribution.
> It's been 3 weeks and counting...
>
> In the meantime, I've restarted the 1.2.2 port that I had suspended
> for the reasons stated by Simon below.
>
> scott
>
>
> "Simon J. Gerraty" wrote:
> >
> > Frank,
> >
> > [Hope you don't mind me cc'ing current-users, but this may be of
> > general interest]
> >
> > > I heard that quick.com.au crashed, which explains why I could not
> > > reach it. I hope it can be recovered.
> >
> > Yes, its back - in a nice new case.  Filesystem damage was restricted
> > to NetBSD/current - which was easily fixed by checking it out again
> > :-)
> >
> > > Anyway, I believe you did the NetBSD port of JDK. The last version
> > > you did is 1.1.6, I think. 1.2 has been out for a bit now, and
> > > more and more people are using it. The obvious question is: do you
> > > plan to do 1.2 soon?
> >
> > Actually I started on 1.2 quite a while ago.  I also have 1.1.8 but
> > have not had a chance to unpack it yet.
> >
> > As for 1.2, it is much cleaner than 1.1.x so I decided to start from
> > scratch and make only the changes that were needed for NetBSD.  I've
> > done most? of what is needed to attempt a build, but got a bit stuck on
> > the context stuff - 1.1.x just uses setjmp etc, 1.2 seems to use that
> > as well as some svr4 {get,set} context stuff, I was still trying to
> > sort out the significance of that when the new license came out for
> > 1.2.x
> >
> > The new license for 1.2.x makes it impossible for us to do a port and
> > make it freely available.  We could make patches available - but then
> > every NetBSD site that wanted to use JDK 1.2.x would need to sign the
> > Sun license - thus excluding themselves from working on kaffe and the
> > like.
> >
> > As I understand it, we could still do a jdk 1.2.x port but would need
> > to fork out money for the test suite and need to pay royalties for
> > each copy given away - not really viable :-) Linux are apparently
> > exempt from this restriction.
> >
> > All in all I didn't see much point persisting with a 1.2 port if it
> > was going to be a dead end.  This is a real pain as I had _lots_ of
> > things I wanted to work on that needed 1.2.
> >
> > Perhaps we need to lobby Sun to grant NetBSD the same breaks as Linux
> > since after all we are the ones that support all their old gear :-)
> >
> > I'm changing jobs next week and will be moving to the SF Bay Area
> > later this year - this may give me some more time to work on JDK ports
> > - I'd like to at least do 1.1.8/i386 and sparc.  Though the opposite
> > may end up happening :-)
> >
> > --sjg
>