Mark J. Wielaard

FSF statement on jury’s partial verdict in Oracle v Google

Mark Wielaard — Thu, 10 May 2012 07:46:43 +0000

Were it grounded in reality, Oracle’s claim that copyright law gives them proprietary control over any software that uses a particular functional API would be terrible for free software and programmers everywhere. It is an unethical and greedy interpretation created with the express purpose of subjugating as many computer users as possible, and is particularly bad in this context because it comes at a time when the sun has barely set on the free software community’s celebration of Java as a language newly suitable for use in the free world. Fortunately, the claim is not yet reality, and we hope Judge Alsup will keep it that way.

John Sullivan, executive director of the Free Software Foundation

GNU Classpath, What is Java?

Mark Wielaard — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:12:23 +0000

Funny to see Tap the Waterdroplet (the GNU Classpath mascot) used in court to explain what Java is:

Tap makes a couple more cameo appearances in the documents. It is a fun read.

Automagically merging ChangeLog files with mercurial or git

Mark Wielaard — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 21:45:59 +0000

When a project keeps a GNU style ChangeLog file to keep track of who changed what where then those files can be automagically merged if you use mercurial or git.

gnulib contains a module git-merge-changelog which, despite the name, works perfectly with several version control systems.

To install it:

git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/gnulib.git
cd gnulib
./gnulib-tool --create-testdir --dir=/tmp/testdir123 git-merge-changelog
cd /tmp/testdir123
./configure
make
make install

Mercurial

For Mercurial add the following lines to your ~/.hgrc:

[merge-patterns]
ChangeLog = git-merge-changelog

[merge-tools]
git-merge-changelog.executable = /usr/local/bin/git-merge-changelog
git-merge-changelog.args = $base $local $other

That installs the git-merge-changelog driver globally for all hg repos.

git

For git add the following lines to your ~/.gitconfig

[merge "merge-changelog"]
	name = GNU-style ChangeLog merge driver
	driver = /usr/local/bin/git-merge-changelog %O %A %B

[core]
    attributesfile = ~/.gitattributes

And add the following line to ~/.gitattributes

ChangeLog       merge=merge-changelog

Note: The global core.attributesfile exists only since git 1.7.4, before that you would have to configure this for each git repo separately, by doing:

cd ~/src/[repo-name]
echo "ChangeLog   merge=merge-changelog" >> .git/info/attributes

And never worry again about having to manually merge ChangeLog files.

IcedTea and OpenJDK now part of OIN

Mark Wielaard — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:17:35 +0000

The Open Invention Network patent agreement now also covers IcedTea and OpenJDK (see the new System Environment Components list). The covered version of GCC/GNU Classpath/libgcj have been updated to the latest release and various GNU Classpath[X] components have been added. As have the Eclipse SDK and ECJ. This is good news since that means the various companies which are part of OIN (Red Hat, IBM, Oracle, Google, Sony, Philips, Novell etc.) have agreed to patent cross-license and release from claims of patent infringement each other and everybody who joins OIN and agrees to collaborate in the same way around GNU/Linux and the various implementations of the java programming language.

503: Service Unavailable

Mark Wielaard — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:13:20 +0000

Planet Classpath is offline today, because the US congress is considering legislation that could kill us forever. The legislation is called the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). This legislation threatens everyone’s freedom of speech, privacy, and security online.

This would unmake the Web, just as proposed in the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). We don’t want that world. Visit AmericanCensorship.org for some options to contact your representatives if you are an American citizen. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has more information on this and other issues central to your freedom online.

We will return tomorrow,

The Management

Free Java @ FOSDEM 2012 (CFP deadline end this year!)

Mark Wielaard — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 22:34:54 +0000

The end of 2011 is near.
The Free Java Momentum will be even bigger in 2012.
Have you made your new year’s resolutions yet?
And is attending Free Java @ FOSDEM 2012 on Feb 4 and 5 one of them?
http://wiki.debian.org/Java/DevJam/2012/Fosdem

Or are you even more ambitious and will you submit a talk proposal?
Then please make sure you submit an abstract before the end of the year
to fosdem@developer.classpath.org. Full instructions can be found at:
http://wiki.debian.org/Java/DevJam/2012/Fosdem/CallForParticipation

Call for participation: Free Java @ FOSDEM 2012

Mark Wielaard — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 13:42:23 +0000

We are pleased to announce the Call for Participation in the FOSDEM 2012 Free Java DevRoom!

This marks the 9th year that the Free Java DevRoom has been a part of FOSDEM. Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th of February 2012 Brussels, Belgium.

The Free Java DevRoom has become unique in that it has attracted upstream, downstream, distrbutors and Free Software hackers together in one venue. Topics range from the “deep technical” to “deep community”.

Join us for this year’s theme: “Free Java Momentum”
Check out our wiki for more details on the conference:
http://wiki.debian.org/Java/DevJam/2012/Fosdem
And join the freejava-devroom@lists.fosdem.org
https://lists.fosdem.org/mailman/listinfo/freejava-devroom

Please submit one (or more) 30 minute talk proposal(s) by the 30th of December 2011 to fosdem@developer.classpath.org. A template for submitting a talk can be found at: http://wiki.debian.org/Java/DevJam/2012/Fosdem/CallForParticipation

Please join us!

–The Free Java DevRoom Organizing Committee
Andrew Haley, Red Hat
Dalibor Topic, Oracle
Dr Andrew John Hughes, Red Hat
Mark Wielaard, IcedTea
Sylvestre Ledru, Debian
Tom Marble, Informatique

p.s. We had some nice media coverage last year…

FLOSS Weekly 152: FOSDEM
http://twit.tv/floss152

Linux Outlaws 191 – Special: FOSDEM Coverage
http://old.linuxoutlaws.com/podcast/191

Moving the builder, planet and icedtea-backup servers

Mark Wielaard — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 11:26:48 +0000

Unfortunately builder.classpath.org, planet.classpath.org and
icedtea.wildebeest.org (which acts as the icedtea backup server) need to
move to a different internet connection… twice…

First they will move today/tomorrow to a slower connection, and then one
or two weeks later they will hopefully move to a much faster connection.
Each time the IP addresses will change. This might cause some unexpected
downtime or make the servers unreachable for some time.

You might notice some warnings emitted when committing to one of the
repositories that trigger the buildbot when it cannot reach
builder.classpath.org. These are “harmless”, except that your commit
will not be tested by the autobuilders. So please be extra careful what
you commit in the next couple of days.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

Libre Java developer room at Fosdem 2012

Mark Wielaard — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 08:19:31 +0000

The Fosdem 2012 Developer rooms have been announced. And Libre Java is one of them! I hope to see everybody again in Brussels on 4 and 5 February.

LibreOffice – The Document Foundation – One Year

Mark Wielaard — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:57:05 +0000

Let’s have a look at some numbers: we have 136 members who have been nominated for their contributions to the project; we have some 270 developers and 270 localizers (although we always want to attract more), many of whom are also members; we have over 100 mailing lists, with over 15,000 subscribers, half of whom receive all our announcements; and there have been thousands of articles in the media worldwide.

LibreOffice is the result of the combined activity of 330 contributors – including former OpenOffice.org developers – having made more than 25,000 commits

The Document Foundation celebrates its first anniversary

Impressive…