Re: GCJ with OpenJDK Java API instead of GNU Classpath

[Andrew Haley <aph@redhat.com>]

Andrew John Hughes wrote:
> 
> The clause in the OpenJCK6 license which restricts its use to projects
> 'substantially derived' from OpenJDK (judgement of which is made
> secretly by Sun as part of the decision process) makes me very dubious
> about it being a test of the specification.  It's very clearly a test
> of compatibility with the reference implementation provided by Sun and
> only JDKs derived from this reference implementation have ever passed
> it.

I don't believe this to be true, BTW: I know IBM have a clean room
implementation, and I think others do too.

> There are places where the specification is unclear and the TCK will
> resolve them in favour of how Sun chose to interpret the
> specification.

Right.

> I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but let's also not fool
> ourselves that this is all there is to being able to run Java
> applications.

Who would?  This looks like a strawman argument to me.

> For me, keeping the tests a secret and only allowing them to be run
> against approved JDKs just makes me distrust the whole process.  We
> know from our work on GNU Classpath and GCJ that many applications
> can be run without passing the TCK or even having a complete
> implementation of every API imaginable.  Similarly, we know from
> working on IcedTea that there are issues above and beyond the bounds
> of TCK testing.

Of course.

Andrew.