Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1998 20:28:37 -0500
To: java-linux@java.blackdown.org
From: "Kevin B. Hendricks" <kbhend@dogwood.tyler.wm.edu>
Subject: Sun and Linux

To answer your question:

- Sun has licensed the 1.2 source under a special license to Steve Byrne
who in-turn sub-licenses the source to us allowing us to get access to the
1.2 source early (in late October, early November)

- Sun has provided 2 engineers that joined the Blackdown porting effort who
did alot of the initial 1.2 port to Linux and who have/will answer
techincal questions for us (a huge improvement over our previous situation!)

- Sun has provided a JIT binary to Blackdown that works with x86 (the other
cpus must come up with something on their own, luckily the PPC has access
to Metrowerks JIT source)

- Sun has provided Steve with the JCK so that we can finally tests the JDK
and make sure it passes all of Sun's tests

- Sun (via the 2 engineers) will be able to incorpaorate our
patches/changes back into the source tree that will lighten the load of
future upgrades.

- Sun has provided Steve with a Sparc machine with which to help the Sparc
port along.

None of this was available under the previous non-commercial license.

As far as I am concerned, I am very happy with Sun's support for Linux.  My
biggest fear was that Sun would take over complete control of the JDK port
and only support the Sparc and x86 cpus leaving the PPC and Alpha out in
the cold.  They did not do this which makes me very happy.  The engineers
who have joined the team have ben very helpful answering questions and
without them, the PPC port of 1.2 would still be non-existant.

Because of this, JDK 1.2 is running well on PPC right now (with admittedly
some bugs yet to iron out) which also makes me very happy.


I hope this clarifies things somewhat.

Kevin

Blackdown Porting Team (for PPC)






----------------------------------------------------------
Kevin B. Hendricks
Associate Professor, Operations & Information Technology
School of Business, College of William & Mary
Williamsburg, VA 23187, kbhend@dogwood.tyler.wm.edu
http://business.tyler.wm.edu