[Discuss] An interesting win with the Canadian government

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2006-05-14 17:40-0700 Corey Burger wrote:

> On 5/14/06, Alan W. Irwin <irwin at beluga.phys.uvic.ca> wrote:
>> On 2006-05-14 01:40-0700 Corey Burger wrote:
>> 
>> > On 5/13/06, David Bronaugh <dbronaugh at linuxboxen.org> wrote:
>> >> Looks like Stats Can will let us complete our census online with Linux
>> >> after all.
>> >>
>> >> http://www12.statcan.ca/IRC/english/advisory_e.htm
>> >>
>> >> I'd say that's a big win :)
>> >>
>> >> David Bronaugh
>> >
>> > Yep, looks like we won, but only partially. Now we need to get the
>> > blind and disabled groups to join us and get the Java killed as well.
>> 
>> Java is a viable and useful language.
>
> I agree. Once we have have a free java, I will not hesitate to
> consider it for desktop applications.

I suggest you consider it now, then. Free java has a lot of power. I am not
much of a java programmer so I don't want to over-advocate it, but I
discovered about a year ago as part of PLplot tests that I run, that the
java interface for PLplot worked well for free java (the combination of gcj,
gij, and classpath) without any adjustments being required. From what I have
read, other developers are having similar good experiences with free java.
Frankly, it is wonderful to never have to sign those stupid java licensing
agreements again. The one fly in the ointment is Sun's proprietary Java
developers keep extending their library like mad (I suppose to gratuitously
differentiate their product from everybody else's) so if you get some java
application from a developer using Sun java there may be an issue until the
free classpath project catches up with whatever exotic java library function
he has decided to use. However, PLplot is going to stick with free java from
now on for all our testing so such extensions will never be an issue for us
(although since free java is a subset of the Sun version, users with the Sun
version can interface to PLplot without problems.) Similarly, as a web
developer you should be all right if you develop and test your java
applications using a free java environment. That should have all the power
you need, and every brand of java should understand the result on the client
side.

Alan
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Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net); the
Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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