OpenOffice 2.0 Criticized on Use of Java

karvind writes "Yahoo is running a story on how OpenOffice 2.0 Faces Opposition over Its Use of Java. According the article: "The problem, according to some free software voices, is that OO.o relies too much on Sun Microsystems Inc.'s proprietary Java programming language in an open-source project. In particular, free software advocates are objecting to the use of Sun specific Java code for such OO.o 2.0 features as the new, Microsoft Access-like database management program, Base and Writer's (OO.o's word processor) document wizards." Linus Torvalds also moved to an open-source solution for software configuration management system."

Comments

Umm, it's been fixed to compile under GCJ...

[delirium28]

If you RTFA, you'll notice a link to Caolán McNamara's blog, which indicates how to get OO.o to build under GCJ. It also points out (as many have mentioned here) that no proprietary Sun classes are really being called here, it's just that the FOSS equivalents aren't quite up to speed yet.

It seems that people are getting upset at looking at the imports in the code without realizing that THEY ARE NEVER USED!!! Again, I refer you to the blog entry, but for those of you too lazy:

This gcj request asks for the addition of java.awt.Frame.createBufferStrategy which is all that is missing from gcj to build the java canvas stuff. (Though the canvas module contains a pile of spurious imports of sun.awt which are unnecessary and can be removed, not that there's much point right now, if a createBufferStrategy becomes available then removing the sun.awt from the canvas/java .javas is all that's outstanding)

Nothing to see here, just move along. More jumping the gun rather than investigating things to completion.