[El] gdal-java

[Mathieu Baudier]

> what will the different collaborating projects be doing with respect to
> Java Advanced Imaging? (a central piece to many java GISes)

Big, big question indeed...

> Besides its license issues (which may be worked around by having the
> user transparently download and rebuild the sources), there is still
> another issue I wasn't really aware of:
> JAI will only build and fully run with Sun-Java, no OpenJDK.

Yes, I am also under the impressions that there is no way around Sun
JRE/JDK if you want JAI.

Some time ago, I put together a tutorial on this on the wiki:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Enterprise_Linux_GIS#With_Sun.2FOracle_JRE_and_JAI_native_.28recommended_by_GeoServer.29

That would already be great if we could at least package/automate part of it.

> Ask OpenJDK to supply a stub for sun.awt.image.codec.JPEGParam?

The IceadTea and classpath projects (http://icedtea.classpath.org) are
good at providing what OpenJDK can't (or doesn't want to) provide. For
example a FLOSS Java browser plugin.

Maybe we could contact them about this?

Red Hat is quite supportive of this project, so they may be interested
in our needs. And this would benefit everybody beyond EL.

However, may be they simply won't be able to do so (again for legal reasons)

> Supply such a stub just for the purpose of compiling an unmodified JAI?

Do you think we would have the legal right to do so?

> Wait for Sun / now Oracle?

Hmm, I don't feel them very FLOSS oriented at the moment.
I would not bet on them moving in any direction that would make our
life easier (although everything could happen).