[Savannah-hackers] savannah.gnu.org: submission of KopiSusu

[ejb]

A package was submitted to savannah.gnu.org.
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Erwin Bolwidt <address@hidden> described the package as follows:
License: gpl
Other License: 
Package: KopiSusu
System name: ksusu

The purpose of KopiSusu is to create and maintain a Free java compiler that 
follows the official standards as closely as possible.
In accordance with the \'eat your own dogfood\' principle, it is written only 
in the java language.

The project should move KopiSusu in a direction where it closely cooperates 
with other Free Software java efforts. It is already regression-tested against 
the Kaffe and Classpath java libraries, but more effort must be taken in the 
area of installers, working around bugs in implementations of Free virtual 
machines, etc.

To improve its speed (yes, java does have some drawbacks), more must be done in 
the field of optimization, and there are several plans for making it work with 
gcj, the gcc java implementation.

A possibility that hasn\'t yet been discussed with the people involved, is to 
replace the current java source frontend of gcj with a future version of 
KopiSusu; the source of KopiSusu is currently being refactored to allow 
multiple targets for the compiler in addition to the current .class file 
target; options are C++ source or a native interface into the gcj backend.

Important to note is that KopiSusu is based on the KOPI suite, made by the 
Austrian company DMS. KJC 1.4F is used by kaffe (it\'s in the distribution, at 
least, but it doesn\'t seem to be a favorite).
KopiSusu is now about 200 hours of hard work separated from KJC, and a merge 
with KJC doesn\'t seem possible, since DMS wants copyrights to the whole 
project, and don\'t even accept submissions if the copyright is assigned to the 
FSF. Presumably this is because they also want to release a commercial version 
with a different license than the GPL.

>From what I gather, the main developer who created KJC is no longer working 
>for DMS, the website hasn\'t been updated for a year, hardly anybody is 
>responsive (except for Edouard Parmelan, who sadly doesn\'t have control over 
>the KOPI project) and the promised 1.5 release that is available (unrelease) 
>from CVS has not fixed the majority of bugs in KJC. If you need more rationale 
>for a fork, I\'ll provide it - I\'ve discussed it with a few people who have 
>longer experience with the GNU project thant I have.