Kaffe's MS-Extensions Will Hurt Java

[Mike Cornall]

Archie Cobbs wrote:

> Mike Cornall writes:
> > This is a delightfully enticing argument. It's also utter nonsense.
>
> <IMHO>
> That may be so (and not to sound too snotty), but where's your freely
> available, written-from-scratch JVM and class library??
>
> When I see it, then your comments will have the same significance
> for me as Tim's.. until then, talk is cheap.
> </IMHO>
>
> -Archie
>
> ___________________________________________________________________________
> Archie Cobbs   *   Whistle Communications, Inc.  *   http://www.whistle.com

A man's technical achievements may be great, but that does not make him immune
to making moral or logical errors.

Also, I am not denying Tim's achievement, I am trying to stop him from
destroying it.

If Tim follows through with his plan of trying to support the MS "standard",
he will be doing what Bill Gates calls "putting himself on the treadmill". He
will be thoroughly distracted, trying to keep up with a shifting and
undocumented MS protocol, and his product will suffer as a result.
Furthermore, as shown by the Bristol case, MS will never truly support
anything that does not further the goal of forcing people back to the
Microsoft fold. MS will be very helpful at first, but once they have convinced
enough developers to use the MS extensions (thus splitting the Java standard),
they will cut back on their support, and future MS-extenions will never seem
to work quite right under Kaffe. In fact, Microsoft's real purpose here may be
to convince Windows developers that it's safe to use J++, by dangling the
promise that they can always switch to Unix/Kaffe later on.

If Tim carries through with his plan, then either Transvirtual, or Java, could
end up being destroyed, or at least severely damaged. The list of Microsoft's
former partners is littered with examples.

Don't do it Tim, not for me, but for yourself. Protect your company. Protect
Java.