[Mono-dev] JAVA is now GPL..

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hello,

> Great, now mono can improve its JIT, AOT compilers and their garbage
> collectors with cross pollination from Sun's JVM..

We have historically looked at other open source compilers, garbage
collectors and virtual machines.   Intel produced a number of
high-quality ones, so did IBM and there is quite a lot of research in
the virtual machine world and code generation world to grab ideas from.

But it is easier said than done.   The concepts are probably reusable,
the code is much harder.

Also, Mono is dual licensed, under commercial terms for environments
where the GPL or the LGPL is not suitable, so we would not be able to
use the code in any case.

> - adopting/adapting Java SE garbage collector for mono

This is one of those "easier said than done".  Even the ORP GC that was
designed to be reusable turned out to need too much work to make this
feasible.

Also, Java GCs do not have as many requirements as .NET GCs, so its not
a matter of copy/pasting.  Significant work would be required anyways.

> - adopting/adapting Java SE JIT and AOT compiler technology for mono

As someone else pointed out, JITing Java is a subset of JITing .NET, so
it would still require a significant amount of work.   But if someone
wants to do it, we could provide some advise. 

Consider generics: .NET has generics at the CIL level, Java does not.

> - adapting JAVA JVM to run CIL directly, transforming mono in a
> framework/wrapper + CIL2javabytecode translator..

Interesting research topic.

> - enhancing mono IKVM..

Yeah, Jeroen Fritjers already expressed his willingness to go thta
route. 

> There is a lot of technology/code that can be shared..
> 
> What do you guys think?
> Do you also see this has a good thing?
> Will there  be any palpable benefits for mono now that sun JDK is GPL ?
> 
> just for the record:
> JavaSE:
> https://openjdk.dev.java.net/source/browse/openjdk/
> svn checkout https://openjdk.dev.java.net/svn/openjdk/trunk openjdk
> --username guest
> 
> best regards,
> 
> ps.: keep going strong
> 
> --
> Miguel Sousa Filipe
> 
>