Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 3rd Sep 2007 21:43 UTC, submitted by Mark Wielaard
Java Just in time for Fedora 8 test 2 IcedTea has landed in Fedora RawHide. The IcedTea project provides a harness to build the source code from the Sun OpenJDK project using Free Software build tools (gcj) and provides replacements for the non-free binary plugs with code from the GNU Classpath project. Installing this experimental GPL Java platfom is now as easy as yum install java-1.7.0-icedtea. In addition, Sun has promised to provide a Test Compatibility Kit soon so people can see how 'officially Java' this package really is.
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RE[2]: hmmm
by kaiwai on Tue 4th Sep 2007 02:35 UTC in reply to "RE: hmmm"
kaiwai
Member since:
2005-07-06

Because as the news snippet states, there are some portions that are binary only. Sun was only able to open the source for the portions that they had the rights to do so. Some parts (such as Java2D, and font rasterisation) were under 3rd party licenses.


I'd assume such things could be accomplished using things like Cairo/Freetype to plugin some of the gaps?

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RE[3]: hmmm
by binarycrusader on Tue 4th Sep 2007 02:47 in reply to "RE[2]: hmmm"
binarycrusader Member since:
2005-07-06

Yes, and that is exactly what some people are doing right now.

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RE[4]: hmmm
by trembovetski on Tue 4th Sep 2007 15:53 in reply to "RE[3]: hmmm"
trembovetski Member since:
2006-09-30

Java2D folks had already integrated Freetype (via
a pluggable interface, so Sun's JRE can continue
using the proprietary T2K rasterizer, and openjdk-based
can plug-in freetype):

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.java.openjdk.build.devel/92

The graphics rasterizer will take longer to replace,
unfortunately.
(Cairo is not exactly a drop-in replacement, although
freetype wasn't either) In fact, we're looking at
other rasterizers.

Dmitri

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 3