FC4 slimfast slimfest

[Gerald Henriksen]

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 15:36:42 -0800, you wrote:

>Phil Muldoon wrote:
>> 
>> It's difficult to rank one language, package, or set of tools over
>> another,
>
>No, it's really not.  Useful metrics include:
>
>  - how many of the critical packages already depend on them;
>  - how many widely-used packages are written in them.

None of which requires that the languages themselves need to be
included.

>Regardless of your opinions of the merits of the Java language, it's
>just not heavily used by any of the things that desktop users bump into
>every day.  (Except, *possibly*, web page applets, but I gather you're
>talking about a much bigger scope than that.)

And how many desktop users bump into or need gcc? Apache? Sendmail?

Fedora, like almost any of the Linux distributions is aimed at several
different audiences.  If one of those target audiences is developers
then Java is a valid thing to include.  Otherwise remove all the
compilers and just leave in the required runtimes.

>You may argue that it would be more heavily used if it was more widely
>available, but I don't think language advocacy is a good enough reason
>to make people download more stuff that they don't *yet* want or need.

There are a lot of people who need Java, whether it be students at
school or working developers or anyone else who is interested.

Perhaps most importantly though is that Novell is pushing Mono (C#)
and Red Hat is pushing Java.  If Red Hat doesn't even include Java in
Fedora then that compromises the Red Hat message.  Is this advocacy?
Yes.   But sometimes you just can't avoid it.

Gerald