Java compatibility? (was Re: Not a bash, just the facts)

[Derek Broughton]

Matthew R. Dempsky wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 25, 2006 at 10:35:06PM +0000, Daniel Carrera wrote:
>> Matthew R. Dempsky wrote:
>> >The last programming competition I went to, I remember there being
>> >*four* versions of Java available.  Seems really ironic for a language
>> >with compatibility as a core goal.
>> 
> Again, I don't know.  I seem to recall one version was from IBM and
> three versions were from Sun (some 1.5.x release and two 1.4.x
> releases, IIRC).

How is three versions of exactly the same product from one vendor, ironic. 
It just means that it's in active development, with old versions still
supported.

However, it's not hard to come up with 4 different versions of Java for
linux.  Sun, Blackdown, Kaffe, gcj.  I'm not entirely sure how Blackdown
differs from Sun these days, but Kaffe and gcj are quite different
approaches to providing Sun Java compatibility while remaining completely
Free.  The free versions _are_ compatible - where they have actually been
implemented - but there are still some gaping holes in their
implementations.
-- 
derek