Cutting Free

The co-founders of gNewSense, Paul O’Malley & Brian Brazil, very kindly agreed to give an interview. As usual, it was conducted by email.

It’s great to have their two differing perspectives. Between them, they provide a balance that is probably responsible for the success of gNewSense. Their passion is also quite evident.

They tell us what gNewSense is about, where it’s going, and why their distribution maintenance tool, "Builder", is so invaluable. 

Can you describe your backgrounds?

POM: Currently working as an IT Manager for what we call a SME company here (Small Medium Enterprise). I started using Free Software in 1994, I stopped using a popular desktop as my personal desktop at that time.

BB: I’m currently working as a Systems Administrator.

I graduated recently (2006) with a degree in Computer Science. 

Can you tell us what gNewSense is?

POM: A Free as in Freedom GNU/Linux Distribution.

BB: A project to produce a fully free version of Ubuntu, and to allow others to do the same. 

Why did you start gNewSense?

POM: In Nov ‘05 Richard Stallman and Mark Shuttleworth were in Tunis. They both spoke of gnubuntu, however both meant something that the other could not mean. As a Ubuntu member, I thought, hang on a sec that is a great idea. I nearly dropped the idea but one particular person in Texas kept prodding me.

I asked Brian for help, he kindly agreed and so began an adventure. As the idea developed, it became obvious to us that to make the distro "FSF Acceptable" several steps had to be taken. Not pointing at none Free Software, not using non free tools and, very important on the list, we needed a punny name.

BB: I was interested in the idea of providing what at the time was ubuntu-libre as I always want all the source available to me. Creating a distribution is also a black art, and I hoped to partially fix that by documenting and scripting all the steps. 

Where does the name come from?

POM: People using NU for New and GNU it was too much of a pun to miss. GNU - Sense

It came from a chat Brian and I had about gpg keys and RMS’s one came into the conversation.

BB: The name originated as Gnusiance as a reference to RMS’s GPG key, but was later changed to gNewSense to also capture the New Sense of the distribution and as a pun on GNU. 

At what point did the Free Software Foundation get involved?

BB: A few days after the 0.85 release, they contacted us. Sometime after that they provided hardware and hosting. 

What exactly is the FSF’s involvement? Do they pay you, as individuals, to work on gNewSense?

POM: No.

BB: We’re not paid by the FSF. They provide hardware, hosting and related support. 

Can you tell us how many gNewSense downloads there have been?

BB: As a very conservative estimate, 6000. However this doesn’t include mirrors.

Can you explain why binary blob Linux drivers are an issue?

POM: They rob users of their freedom to interact with the hardware fully, they may contain bugs that are not fixed for months. I believe that in some really extreme cases outside of the GNU/Linux field you can not get any source for the code that people run on their systems.

I think Free Software has a window of opportunity there.

BB: They are code which the manufacturer can change, but I can’t.

Do you think that user-complacency has contributed to the problem?

POM: User complacency and in some cases a lack of knowledge. When it comes to complacency, those users should say to themselves, just because one person puts their hand in the fire should they be copied.

BB: Yes.

How much hardware is affected by the removal of binary blobs?

POM: At this point if I may, I wish to give into what is said to be a national trait, that of answering a question with a question. So I wish to turn the thinking in the question on its head, and say if your hardware reacts badly to gNewSense,  is it time for you to examine what the vendor is doing to you? If they offer some piece of hardware in exchange for your freedom and then they don’t trust you to run that hardware correctly. They don’t trust you, why should you trust them? As you don’t have the specifications could it be the case that they are pretending that commodity is really something luxurious? How can you know that?

BB: http://svn.gnewsense.svnhopper.net/gnewsense/builder/trunk/firmware/firmware-removed

Mostly network cards (wired and wireless), some SCSI controllers and sound cards. We have many reports of gNewSense working perfectly, including on some laptops. 

Why did you choose to base gNewSense on Ubuntu?

POM: The bug fixing that went into its release and the Long Term Support format, which gives us room to be slow on the take up.

BB: Ubuntu LTS is a good base with an active community, and is also very user friendly. 

Is gNewSense likely to move away from Ubuntu, as a base?

POM: Not in the short term, and it would depend on the size of the community and their energy. If it was it would most likely head off in
its own direction, with the same goals.

BB: This might happen in the distant future when the project is bigger. It’s more likely that we’d become a seperate distribution at that point rather than switching to Debian. 

You state that your goal is to create a fully Free distribution. Is there a lot of software, other than the kernel, on which you are having to work to achieve this goal?

POM: No, as we don’t include software that is None Free intentionally. The layout of the repositories upstream help here.

BB: Our changes are documented at, although many are rebranding:

• http://www.gnewsense.org/MainRepo/MainRepo
• http://www.gnewsense.org/Universe/Universe

The kernel is the hardest part, but certain aspects of software such as Firefox also cause issues. 

What is your position on software that is designed to work with MP3, and other similarly patented formats, that has traditionally been excluded by the likes of Debian?

POM: We leave it out. In some places to include those materials would be illegal, so easier to not do it from the start. We have no right to compromise any user, or ask any user to compromise themselves.

BB: While we agree that software patents are bad, we specifcally take no stance on the mp3 issue. 

What sort of release schedule are we likely to see?

POM: Depends but a point release on something like a four month basis might be reasonable. This is the view from where we stand today. It is a good vista, unlike some vistas we could mention.

BB: We currently release when there have been changes to Builder that significantly improve things. There’s currently no set schedule, but once a quarter seems likely. 

Is there likely to be a KDE version of gNewSense?

POM: Yes, thanks to the tremendous work of Chris Fernandez.

BB: There will be a KDE variant with the next release.

Do you hope to include the Upstart sysvinit replacement in one of the next few releases?

POM: No for the reasons Brian states.

BB: No, we’re currently sticking to Dapper so this doesn’t affect us.

You have a very distinctive login screen. One of the most attractive in GNU/Linux distributions. Do you plan to create a
similarly distinctive look throughout the distribution?

POM: We would like to. If people would do what we asked on the list we might manage to get something good together.

BB: This depends on what artwork the community provides to us. It’d certianly be a great thing, but is not related to the main aims of the distro which is the issue of freedom.

We have announced a photo contest for the images for the next release. 

What do you think is the best way to persuade hardware manufacturers to either provide Free Software drivers, or the appropriate documentation to create our own?

POM: The most practical thing people can do is put pressure on the retail end of the market. They are closest to the purchaser.

To do this, tell the supplier what you want, and WHY!

What do you expect for gNewSense in 2007?

POM: Growth, but that is not hard given where we were last year.

BB: New releases, multiarch support and the rise of several distributions that use Builder. 

Sun has talked about releasing OpenSolaris under the GPL. What effect do you think this could have on the Linux kernel? Could it help with the driver situation?

POM: It would lead to a very interesting situation. It would be more interesting if it was done after the release of GPLv3, and it was GPLv3 or later. This would make one of the Sun stacks so attractive to Free Software people it would be unreal. In addition anything that has "GPLv2 or later" could be used on an OpenSolaris system. How is that for low hanging fruit?

What has been the most difficult thing in creating and maintaining gNewSense?

POM: Finding Brian, and then "what he says". 

BB: Tracking down what’s causing weird failures. For instance the installer will crash out if the restricted kernel modules aren’t available, and weird undocumented things happen if /etc/ls.so.nohwcap exists. 

What has been the most enjoyable?

POM: Working with people on it, seeing it getting attention.

Of which gNewSense achievement are you most proud?

POM: The idea of steps repeatable documented and to be available to others was the most important aspect in the design. To accomplish this we have Builder.

BB: Builder, as this gives anyone the ability to produce a distribution and automatically maintain it. 

What is the best way for people to help gNewSense?

POM: Join us, on IRC or our mailing list, do some documentation on the wiki, fix a bug, help if you have hardware with AMD64 or PPC. Explain to those who do not know what the dangers of none Free Software are.

BB: Our biggest need is for developers and documentation. We need to add more features such as multiarch, and make sure our users can get the help they need from our website.

I’d like to thank Paul and Brian for their excellent answers, and for their work in creating a truly Free GNU/Linux. I’m looking forward to seeing its development.

Related Posts:

• An Ubuntu gNewSense
• What is “Free Software”?
• Free as in Freedom: book review
• Young Upstart
• Fire and Ice
• The interviews

Links:

• gNewSense home page
• gNewSense login screenshot
• Free Software Foundation
• Recommended hardware

Following on from my posts about ippimail (here, here, and here), one of its co-founders, Simon Martin, kindly agreed to give an interview.

He tells us what ippimail is, why it was started, what drew him to Free Software, where it is at the moment, and what the future holds. I would like to thank Simon for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer these questions, and for starting such a great service.

***

Can you describe your background?

SM: I was born in Sweden, hence the interest in making a social contribution perhaps… I moved to the UK when I was ten years old. I trained as a photographer but as the industry turned digital I found myself drawn to the post-production of images as opposed to the creating of them. For the last ten or fifteen years I have spent my time working with other photographers on enhancing their images as opposed to my own. This is where my interest in computers and Open Source started. I began to understand just what a computer could achieve.

The second co-founder of ippimail is a photographer who I have worked with for a number of years.

The third co-founder, my wife, has worked in charities for many years and lately worked in education for local authorities as a project manager.

Can you explain just what ippimail is?

SM: Ippimail started as a hotmail-style email service but is evolving into more of an umbrella site where users can turn their everyday web use into funds for charities at no cost to themselves. Even if you don’t want to use webmail, you can do your shopping through the ippimail shopping directory or your blogging or your Google searches through ippimail. Each activity helps raise funds for various charities.

It is also intended as a showcase for open source software. The entire site is built exclusively on OS software and we will contribute any new code we create to the community. 10% of money we raise will also go back to the community.

Why did you start ippimail?

SM: It started as my wish to contribute to the open source community. I have always been a Mac user, on moral grounds, and the introduction of OS X introduced me to the secure and standards-respecting world of Open Source.

I wanted to do my bit towards furthering the Open Source ideals. I’m not a programmer so I had to think outside the box a bit. Email is both something which everyone who uses the internet does and is perhaps the single most demanding service out there. It seemed an ideal vehicle to use to show off OS and evengelise it to a wider audience.

What drew you to Free Software?

SM: The fact that it is a community thing. Nobody really owns it. It’s therefore much more difficult for anyone to abuse. There are no lock-ins.

What do you think is the most important aspect of Free Software?

SM: The fact that it is cost-free isn’t such a big thing. The fact that it is free as in ‘freedom of speech’ is the draw for me. I also like that the source code is open so we can tailor it as we require and can fix any issues we find with it.

How well is ippimail doing?

SM: It’s much slower going than we had hoped but we are getting there. Spreading the word is the main challenge along with getting people to understand a new concept in terms of what the project is about. Things are so disposable these days that people have a hard time caring about something enough to make it grow. They want it fully formed from the start. Community efforts aren’t like that. They start small and everyone chips in.

How many charities have signed up so far?

SM: Twenty or thirty I would say… We worked very hard to get some familiar names on the list from the outset. Charities like Born Free have been fantastic to us and really understand the concept of building something.

Which of the services (mail/blogs/search/shopping) seem to be doing the best?

SM: You are really comparing apples and bowling balls there… Webmail is doing the best in terms of the number of people using it but the shopping directory is doing the best in terms of raising money. Both are as important to us.

With the webmail, the priority has been to get the actual service up to scratch, not serve the advertising. We now have really good spam filters in place, mail forwarding, filters, html composer etc etc in place.

What developments can we expect to see in the near future?

SM: We’ll be getting even better spam protection, more storage space in webmail, the blogs will be more customisable, we’ll get a US-centric shopping directory. Not necessarily in that order… We also want to introduce ‘disposable’ email addresses.

Are you planning to launch any other services?

SM: That would be telling! The priority in the near future will be to do what we are already doing but do it even better. We do have new aspects to ippimail up our sleeves. Watch this space

What else is in the future for ippimail?

SM: To really get the word out about what we are doing and get people to get more involved. We want users to take ownership of the project and run with it. We pride ourselves as being highly responsive to our users and want to build on that relationship in the future.

We also want to create partnerships with suitable companies and other websites and services. Anyone in the US who wants to sponsor us by way of hosting and storage? This way please…

What do you consider to be the benchmark for web-mail?

SM: Hotmail in terms of users, Gmail in terms of storage and bits of the interface, ippimail in terms of ethics and approach!

What is the best way for people to help?

SM: Use the services we offer! Help spread the word. Communicate any issues you have with the service to us. Volunteer to do some coding. There’s lots of ways to get involved. Even if all you ever did was go through us to do your Google searches, that would be a great help to us.

The great thing about ippimail is that helping the project out is painless. It just requires a tiny bit of time at the beginning.

Does the choice to use Google as your search source compromise your aim to showcase Free Software?

SM: Yes and no. I understand the ethical issues people have with Google, but if we want ippimail to succeed we need to be ‘mass market’, at least to some extent. Google is generally seen as the favourite search engine at the moment so that’s what we want to offer for now. Having said that, we will be offering alternatives in the future. The main problem here being getting an income from the websearch service. This is another area where Google scores highly.

The other thing is that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’. Google are giving the right people some bloody noses as far as I am concerned. Sometimes we need to tickle Google’s toes as well of course…

In time, perhaps with ippimail’s help, the OS community will create a rival to google. Then the choice will be easy.

As I was saying to someone else recently, I often feel that we disappoint people who want ippimail to be ‘purer’ in the immediate term. The fact is that ippimail has to be financially viable as a first priority. This involves short term compromises. The more people get behind the project, the more we will be self sufficient and able to take an ethical stance more often. This is a tough message to get across but it’s a fact of life. We aren’t independently wealthy, sadly. Ippimail has to stand on its own feet in the long term and grow into something we can all be proud of. Truly ‘for the people, by the people’, corny as it sounds.

***

Thanks again to Simon.

I’m very pleased to hear about the increased storage in web-mail, and I’m particularly interested in the "disposable email addresses" (see the Wikipedia link below to find out what they are).

I really would encourage as many people as possible to sign up to ippimail, if only to try it out. The fact that it is web-mail that runs on Free Software is enough for me. The contribution to charity, and Free Software, is a clincher. The interface is a bit basic, but it’s fast. Sign up and post feature requests in the forums; submit patches to SquirrelMail. Free Software can have top-class web-mail.

Related posts:

• ippimail: Free Software web-mail with a feel-good factor
• ippimail: Shopping does work
• ippimail: Backstory

Other interviews:

• GPL Java: An interview with lead Kaffe developer Dalibor Topic

Links:

• ippimail.com
• shop.ippimail.com
• SquirrelMail
• "Disposable email address" page on Wikipedia

Dalibor Topic, lead Kaffe developer and Classpath contributor, kindly agreed to take part in an interview, conducted by email. He uses his insight and expertise to give us the inside on Sun’s GPL’d Java.

He talks about OpenJDK’s effect on Kaffe, Classpath, etc., his views on Mono, his opinion of the Sun code, and more…

DT: I contributed my first few patches to Kaffe back in 2000, after hearing about a free VM.

I really joined the project in earnest in early 2002, helping Jim Pick bring back a slightly dormant Kaffe project back into action, and stayed around since, taking over the duties of a co-maintainer.

Since Kaffe users wanted to use it to run current versions of applications like XML processors, and Kaffe’s class library had not seen much maintenance work for a while, I looked at GNU Classpath as a class library implementation provider with interesting parts to integrate into Kaffe’s own class library to make such applications work.

Thanks to the Classpath team working quickly on implementing more and more of the standard class libraries, soon there was a strong incentive for Kaffe to start merging its own class library with Classpath’s, and that’s how I really got involved with Classpath. We migrated Kaffe gradually over to Classpath’s class library. In the course of that work, several Kaffe developers started working on Classpath directly, and the rest is history.

I’ve got to particularly point out the work done by Mark Wielaard, the GNU Classpath maintainer, and Tom Tromey, the gcj maintainer, that made it so straightforward for Kaffe to become a part of the GNU Classpath community.

Could you describe any other Free Software projects with which you are involved?

DT: In general, I’ve tried to make sure that whatever patches came up in the context of Kaffe porting and development went upstream to the projects we use code from, so you can probably find my name on bug reports and the occasional patch going into GNU Libtool, GNU Gettext, etc.

In my other life, I work on a Free Software theorem prover, SPASS, from the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science in Germany.

What was your first reaction when you heard about Sun releasing Java under the GPL?

DT: I was very happy, and excited that the rumors turned out to be true.

We have won the "struggle to liberate Java" in the finest possible way: with Sun deciding to come with flying colors in support of setting Java free, and taking the leading position in that movement that they deserve, as the creators of the platform.

I’m very pleased with Sun’s execution of it all so far. For example, they’ve been very responsive to resolve questions about the licensing model from Java community members, who may not be familiar with the way the GPL or the Classpath exception works. They’ve done a great job on the FAQ for the OpenJDK project.

Now that there has been some time to think about things, and look at the detail, how has that reaction changed, if at all?

DT: The reaction has not changed, I’m still very happy and excited!

Have you had a look at any of the released code?

DT: Yes, I’ve played around with building HotSpot and javac.

I’ve found a handfull of small compiler warnings to fix, and ran pscan on the code to look for the simpler issues to fix. I’ll fax in my contributor agreement to get my first patches applied upstream.

What did you think of it, and how does it compare with the Kaffe/Classpath code?

DT: I looked at the small C portion of the HotSpot code, where I found the warnings I wanted to fix, and I like it. It’s reasonably easy to find one’s way around it, in particular using the new OpenGrok interface to the code at http://opengrok.neojava.org/hotspot

I’m pretty impressed by how warning-free the code builds on my system. There is a bunch of nice batches of code I’ll have to look at reusing inside Kaffe eventually, though since Kaffe is written in C and HotSpot is written in C++ that’s not necessarily going to be trivial.

It’s hard to compare HotSpot or javac code with Classpath, since they implement different things. On the other hand, compared to Kaffe, HotSpot code shows a lot more maintenance and implementation work going into it, and looks better documented. It is without doubt a great, unique contribution to Free Software.

If Sun hadn’t done this, how long do you think it would have taken the Free Software community to create a full Java implementation and VM?

DT: I think we would have been able to finish implementing 1.5 support in GNU Classpath next year, and many VMs using GNU Classpath already support the features introduced in 1.5.

But by then Sun would have released 1.6 already, and we’d have had to play catch up with the reference implementation of Java again. So, I’m happy the way things turned out, that we can work on Java 1.7 together.

In addition, there are many other interesting problems in the Java space, like deployment and modularity where being able to work together on Free Software solutions should help get the kind of input that helps improve the results for everyone.

Which of the Free Software implementations do you think held the most promise?

DT: It’s hard to pick a single one, since Cacao, gcj, IKVM, JamVM and JikesRVM, for example, all have a lot of good work going into them, partly because some of them are very promising research platforms, and partly since they have a very dedicated community behind them.

Kaffe is noticeably absent on this list, not since I don’t think it has a lot of promise, but since I think it’s more important to bring the projects we work together and share code with into the limelight. A lot of people have heard about Kaffe, and I think they should know about all these other nice Free Software runtimes as well. No single runtime can fit all sizes, and I regularly recommend that people check out those other projects as well. They may find a better solution for their specific problems.

As a Kaffe co-maintainer, I’ve been more focused on encouraging innovation to happen outside the Kaffe project, and bringing code from other projects into Kaffe, rather than trying to position the Kaffe project as the place where things need to happen.

My idea has always been that a diverse community of free VMs is the healthiest one, so I’m glad we’ve achieved that around GNU Classpath.

What is the most valuable aspect of Java for the Free Software community?

DT: There is a huge amount of Free Software written in Java that’s now going to be more readily accessible to users and Free Software developers. That means being able to package more software written in the Java programming language into GNU/Linux distributions, for example.

Do you think that we are more likely to see all Free Java development now focused on Sun’s version; or will we see Kaffe, GCJ, and others thriving because of the released code?

DT: I think we’ll see a bit of both. I hope that Sun will see some good contributions coming from this step, and will continue to build up an enthusiastic and passionate community around the code, like they’ve started with project Peabody, which encouraged community contributions.

I expect that Sun will see most contributions starting to pour in once the class library code is released, as most Java developers will be more familiar with Java, than with C++, or C.

Nevertheless, the way Sun is doing it, starting with the VM and the compiler, allows them to establish the necessary structures, and make sure everything is in place when the rush begins.

I also think that Kaffe, GCJ, etc. will thrive along with OpenJDK, moving toward more unique niches, while at the same time looking at ways to share code with Sun’s implementation; in particular class library code, but probably more bits and pieces over time as well.

We’ve always had a strong culture of giving back to where we take from around GNU Classpath, so I think it will all work out well.

Do you think much of the code and innovation from Kaffe, Classpath, GCJ, etc. will make its way in to Sun Java?

DT: I don’t think that will happen instantly, since Sun’s implementation, being the reference implementation, will very likely be maintained in a much more conservative fashion, than the more experimental free runtime projects.

But, since some of Sun’s class library may have encumbrances from third parties, I hope we’ll see the community outside Sun step in to help write replacements for that code. Some of the current work on GNU Classpath done by Roman Kennke and the rest of the team may help with that, for example.

That being said, I’d expect that new technologies coming from outside Sun, which the Java developer community desires to see in the JDK, will continue to go through the JCP and then into the JDK, eventually.

Have you ever looked at Mono/C#? If so, what did you think of it?

DT: Yes! I’ve actually seen Miguel de Icaza talk a few times, he has a great way of presenting his ideas, so I naturally went and checked out Mono a little bit.

Mono is a fun project. Miguel and the team had looked at Kaffe, and decided to try to write a better system, and afaict have done a very good job on making Mono into a nice, feature-rich runtime. Some of the ideas in Mono would make sense to introduce in Kaffe as well, like using glib for solving some of the standard problems when writing portable C code.

But one of the most impressive things about Mono is not the code, IMHO, it’s the dedicated community of developers trying to turn Mono into a better platform for development of Free Software on the GNOME stack then the alternatives.

What, to your knowledge, have Sun released under the GPL now; and how useful is that to the Free Software Community?

DT: They have released the JavaME reference implementation as PhoneME, the test harness for it as jtreg, the javac compiler, the HotSpot VM, and the Java Help library. In addition, Sun also added the GPL with the Classpath exception as a licensing option for the JavaEE reference implementation, project Glassfish.

In terms of ‘is there a full Free Software Java implementation from Sun’ the answer is now a clear yes for the ME and EE standards, with a significant part of the reference implementation of the JavaSE standard being released through HotSpot and javac. Until the class library arrives as Free Software in Q1 2007, that leaves some time to experiment with hooking HotSpot and javac into GNU Classpath, for example, and that’s what some developers have set out to do.

On the other hand, the ME and EE implementations are useful immediately. The Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution is working on packaging the EE implementation for the next release, afaik, and I’ve already seen a build of PhoneME for OpenEmbedded’s port to the Zaurus PDA device.

Java Help and javac also play a role regarding packaging efforts around Sun’s Free Software IDE NetBeans, since NetBeans depends on those projects.

How useable is what they’ve released now? They describe it as an "early
build" of 1.7. Is it a very unstable version?

DT: I can’t judge the stability of the builds, as I’ve mostly just played around with the source code, rather than the binaries. I know that GNU Classpath developers have made Sun’s javac work on GNU Classpath, and used it to find a bug in GNU Classpath’s regular expression handling code, so that was quite usable. I’ve also seen someone post a build of the PhoneME JavaME implementation for OpenEmbedded on the Sharp Zaurus PDA, so I guess that’s quite usable as well.

Sun say that they will release a "JDK based nearly entirely on open-source code". For those of us who will exclude the resulting non-free parts, do you think the JDK will still be useful?

DT: Definitely. It is not clear at this point how much encumbered code, if any will be left over by the time the class libraries are released. If there are any such parts left over, we’ll have to write Free Software replacements for them, or improve the existing ones until they are good enough to replace the encumbered parts.

But for a lot of Free Software written in the Java programming language, those encumbered parts may not be necessary to use it, so the unencumbered parts will be a very useful contribution on their own for users of such software.

Sun say they are going to make the source for JDK 6 available once they’ve released a full JDK 7 as Free Software. Do you know whether the JDK 6 code will also be under the GPL?

DT: I don’t know. I guess it will be, if any possible, since the differences between JDK6 and early JDK 7 won’t be very large.

I could imagine distributions having an interest in taking the freed JDK 7 code and filling in whatever gaps were left over in a GPLd JDK 6 source code release, and then certifying their builds of that as Java(TM) 1.6 compatible, for example. 

Do you think Free Software developers will embrace the JDK, and implement the parts that Sun have been unable to Free?

DT: That’s already happening in the context of GNU Classpath, to some degree. Sun has explained in the FAQs that the problematic encumbered portions of code lay in the areas of graphics and font rasterizers, and that’s where the commit activity seems to be happening in the last days. GNU Classpath could always use more volunteers for work on the class library, of course!

I think Free Software developers will embrace the JDK as a strong Free Software platform. The wealth of Free Software commons available on the Java platform shows that many Free Software developers have enjoyed working with the platform despite the drawback of having to rely on non-free software until suitable Free Software implementations around GNU Classpath became viable. Now that Java is being liberated, I’d expect it to be used by even more Free Software developers than before, as "the Java Trap" is a thing of the past.

In particular, I’d expect more Free Software developers to look into re-using libraries written in the Java programming language in their own projects, be they Java-based, or not. Java 7 should bring a push towards making the JVM a ubiquitous platform for all sorts of programming languages that need some kind of a runtime, and Sun has hired the JRuby lead developers to help bridge the gap between Ruby and Java using the JVM as the middle ground.

How much of a worry is the trademark on the name "Java"? Do you think Sun will cause problems and be over zealous with their control?

DT: In order to maintain compatibility, Sun only lets implementations that pass the certification process use the Java brand. That has not been a problem for the existing Free Software runtimes, since they avoided using Sun’s trademarks.

I don’t think that’s going to be a problem in the future, either. Sun has created a way for independent implementors to certify their implementations as compatible, and I’d expect those Free Software implementations that want to tap into the marketing power of the Java(TM) brand to certify. Apache Harmony, for example, is an implementation that’s been created with the explicit goal of getting an independent open source implementation Java(TM) certified.

There are certainly things I can imagine happening that would make the life easier for distributions wanting to certify their own builds as Java(TM) compatible, for example, like making the compatibility test suite, the TCK, readily available to such users, so that they can walk through the actual scholarship process faster. That’s probably going to be an interesting subject of discussion once the full JDK has been released.

But, given Sun’s very good execution so far, and the desire of all people involved in liberating Java on Sun’s side to do the right things the right way, I am not afraid of Sun being overzealous at all. They’ve been just plain great since we started talking on how to make this happen.

Of which Kaffe/Classpath achievement are you most proud?

DT: It’s the tightly knit community of Free Software developers around GNU Classpath, for sure. There is even a scientific paper describing the "permeable development" model we’re using to help each other benefit as much as possible from sharing.

That, and showing that there is a demand for Free Software runtimes for the Java programming language, and creating the circumstances which led to cooperation between ASF and FSF to address license compatibility issues in GPLv3, and connecting people worldwide working on liberating Java behind a common backbone in form of GNU Classpath, and many other things that only became possible because of that tightly knit community around the project …

But it’s really the people behind it all that I’m most proud of having the opportunity to work with. GNU Classpath is a really special project in that respect, I think.

***

I would like to thank Dalibor for taking time out to answer these questions. His position gives him a unique insight, and it was generous of him to give us the benefit of his expertise.

• Java now Free Software (GPL)
• Java now Free Software (GPL) - part 2 (reality check)

Other Interviews:

• ippimail: An interview with co-founder Simon Martin. Exploring the web-mail service that runs on Free Software and donates to charity

Links:

• OpenJDK
• Kaffe
• GNU Classpath
• Hotspot at OpenGrok
  
• Dalibor’s blog

Wikipedia pages on the Free Java projects:

• Kaffe
• GNU Classpath
• gcj
• Apache Harmony
• Cacao
• JamVM
• JikesRVM
• SableVM
• IKVM.NET