Hoping this works out...

Ean Schuessler ean@novare.net
Thu, 26 Feb 1998 14:51:52 -0600


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Man Tim, I hope this works out for you guys. My only comments at this
juncture would be:

a - Sun and other large commercial ventures undoubtably have much
    more formidable small-footprint VMs cooking than Kaffe. On an
    apples-to-apples comparison with those technologies the
    "openness" of Kaffe may be a real decision-maker for some people.

b - The main thing that seperates Kaffe from the pack is that it is
    the only truly "open" Java technology out there. An incentive
    which you are preparing to remove. While this "incentive" is
    painful for you it is simultaneously what is keeping your
    technology relevant and keeping competition out of your airspace.

c - The KDE / TrollTech debacle has demonstrated the zero-tolerance
    policy that the Open Source community is prepared to hold
    regarding the legal status of code.

Long and short of it. This _may_ make you more money, maybe. It will
_definatly_ reduce the mindshare that Kaffe holds in the Open Source
community. It would be a real shame if the thing that finally gets
people motivated about contributing a lot of code to a free Java is
the elimination and replacement of Kaffe.

I think that there are other ways you could combat these Kaffe
abusers. There is nothing in the open license that would keep you
from:

a - Refusing to support them.

b - Blacklisting their organizations on the Kaffe website and
    encouraging companies and the public to avoid their technologies.

c - Deny them access to CVS and other early access developers
    services.

d - Deny them access to mailing lists.

e - Deny them access to sites that serve archives of the mailing
    lists.

f - In general block, retard and denounce their efforts in a casual 
    and mafiaesque manner.

This keeps the code free and helps you achieve your goals. Or then
again, maybe we will be looking at Gnaffe in 6-8 months. A total
rewrite working from the existing code base might be very productive
both in efficiency and footprint improvements.

The service industry, I hate it... I'm glad I'm in it right now,
E
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__________________________________________________________________
Ean Schuessler                                 A guy running Linux
Novare International Inc.                  A company running Linux
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