[769] in java-interest
Re: Native Tk
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tom Lord)
Wed Jul 19 17:50:44 1995
From: Tom Lord <lord@cygnus.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 1995 13:16:12 -0700
To: phil@bolthole.com
Cc: java-interest@java.Eng.Sun.COM
In-Reply-To: <199507191858.LAA14223@shell1.best.com> (phil@bolthole.com)
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 1995 11:58:37 -0700 (PDT)
Cc: java-interest@java.Eng.Sun.COM, lord@cygnus.com
From: phil@bolthole.com (Philip Brown)
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>
>
> Another advantage of using Tk with Java is that as alternative
> implementations of Java come on-line, they can all share a Tk based
> run-time system because Tk is free software.
so is java. so is awt. so most likely will any "improved" awt folks write.
whats your point :-)
Last I checked, there seemed to be some big restrictions on how one
could use Java. I understood that, for example, you could not sell a
CDROM full of "Free Software" that included Java because then you
would be charging a fee for distributing it. I also believe that if,
for some purpose, you wanted to make a mini-Java (perhaps an
integer-only version), you could not give your new version to others
because you will have changed a published interface (the bytecode
language).
If my understanding of the permissions that come with Java is wrong,
if those things really are allowed, then i stand happily corrected.
Those are also some of the ways in which Tk is free (in the sense of
"liberty preserving") while Java is not. You can sell copies of Tk.
You can modify Tk and give your modifications to others.
My point was that such freeness makes Tk a good candidate for a
standard run-time because it means that all implementations can share
a common code base (just as many individual X implementations are
derived from a common, free implementation).
(None of this should be taken as a criticism of Sun for its licensing
decisions. We've read on this list that Sun encourages the development
of alternative implementations of Java. When Tk came up, I just wanted
to observe that its more liberal licensing would would be a real boon
to Java implementors needing a de-facto standard run-time.)
-t
-
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