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The Free Software Foundations cry for help has been answered and the GNU Compiler for Java has reaped the benefits.
The GNU Compiler for Java (GCJ), a free software implementation of Java, has been in development for seven years, but with the Free Software Foundation's recent call for volunteers, the project is suddenly receiving more attention than ever before. For many, GCJ is seen as a means of ensuring that the next version of OpenOffice.org does not require non-free versions of Java for full functionality. Yet the scope of the project goes far beyond this immediate need.
Part of the larger GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), GCJ consists of three parts: gcj, a compiler that converts Java code into machine language; libgcj, a collection of standard Java class libraries; and GIJ (GNU Interpreter for Java), a Java virtual machine (JVM).
Over the years, the project has survived a change in sponsoring companies and changing levels of interest in it. Today implementations of GCJ are just starting to become available. GCJ is partly implemented in several distributions already. Debian, for example, includes pdftk, a command-line tool for manipulating PDF files, in its testing and unstable distributions. However, aside from pdftk's dependency on libgcj, nothing marks it as a Java-based program; it simply works the way any compiled program would do. The same is true of gcjwebplugin, a plugin for Web browsers in Debian unstable that uses the gij JVM. However, gcjwebplugin does not include a security manager for Java applets, and should therefore be used with caution. Moreover, both these packages rely on GCJ 3.4, since version 4.0 has yet to find its way into Debian.
A better place to see GCJ in action is Fedora Core 4. Currently in its test 3 release, Fedora Core 4 is intended to showcase GCJ 4.0's capabilities. Full article from NewsForge
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