[kaffe-siteadmin] Fw: About Nihonsoft.

[Jim Pick]

Hi,

I got this response from Nihonsoft in regards to the controversy I
stumbled into with the sponsorship program:

  http://www.kaffe.org/pipermail/kaffe/2003-December/044636.html

I asked if I could forward it to the list.  I'm sending it to the new
kaffe-siteadmin at kaffe.org list, since I regard this stuff as
"administrivia" related to the site, and it's now off-topic for the main
list.  I don't want the kaffe at kaffe.org mailing list to turn into
"Slashdot".  :-)

We've already accepted their sponsorship, but I felt I should at least
allow them a response, since I did drop a mention about there possibly
being a GPL violation on the other mailing list.

Cheers,

 - Jim

Begin forwarded message:

Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 15:10:29 +0900
From: "fchoong" <fchoong at netbeans.jp>
To: "Jim Pick" <jim at kaffe.org>
Subject: About Nihonsoft.


Hi Jim,
I work for Nihonsoft and I would like to clarify that Nihonsoft fully
supports the GPL and is currently planning to release more software under
the GPL. The misunderstanding you have probably heard about of stems from
nihonlinux project(see http://www.nihonlinux.jp) which we are doing with the
help of a lecturer and some students at Aizu University. The lecturer is a
big supporter of the CGPL(See http://www.cgpl.org), but I personally and
Nihonsoft as a whole prefer GPL. We have made a release for nihonlinux.jp at
http://www.nihonlinux.jp/release_en.html and some of the open source people
in Japan have asked for the source code to this release. We made this
release based on packages from Debian.org, but since debian.org has been
down for a while(see: http://www.debian.org/News/2003/20031121), we are not
able to get the source code from the servers. We intend to release the
source code once we can get the sources from the debian servers.
As a side note, I do not wish to take any shots at the open source community
in Japan, but I would like point out that there are many "factions" in the
FLOSS community here, just as there are Linux people, GNU people and Debian
people, and others(Kaffe people perhaps?:) ). We work with some debian
people and I am working with
Fred Toussi on the HSQLDB project(http://www.hsqldb.org) and Nick Ferrier on
the GNU-Paperclips Project over at savannah. HSQLDB alredy works on Kaffe(I
think it was tested by Ito Kazumitsu)and I hope to be able to get
Papaerclips running on Kaffe soon. The group of people that hate us is the
Slashdot Japan people, I do not know exactly why, but we have been called
many names. I do not hate them and I respect their freedom of speech. But we
are closer to the main stream open source people. We like our software to be
used both in Japan and internationally, and Nihonsoft's approach to open
source is similar to the approach at Progeny Systems
Inc.(http://www.progeny.com). We hope to make Java open source, but I guess
Java is not accepted as open source here in Japan(perhaps this is the reason
why we are hated?). I hope to be able to help in the kaffe project, and
through the paperclips project, I may be able to discover some bugs and
submit some bug fixes in the future. Thanks!

David Fu.