[fedora-java] Sun vs "free" java on Fedora

[Francis Kung]

Hi Joe,

> I'm wondering what the strategy is regarding the existing stack vs the
> Sun stack now that it's under a Fedora compatible license. Will the
> two initiatives merge sometime in the future?  I'm sure this has been
> discussed to death in other forums, but can someone who is familiar
> with what's going on summarize?

Unfortunately, the Sun implementation of Java is not 100% free: some 
encumbered areas remain which were released as binary-only plugs.

The IcedTea project (http://icedtea.classpath.org or 
http://iced-tea.org) attempts to use the GNU Classpath project to 
replace these areas and create a 100% free Java implementation based on 
Sun's OpenJDK, and we plan on having this in Fedora.

One problem thus far have been some licensing problems with Sun's 
OpenJDK: a handful of files do not have proper license headers, and 
while we suspect this was merely an oversight, they have not been fixed 
yet and are a barrier to Fedora inclusion.  We are hoping to have this 
resolved before Fedora 8.

Cheers,
Francis