Re: DOM binding considered harmful, discriminates against open source]

>Could someone explain why free/open source would have to use different
>packages.

It shouldn't have to, if all you're doing is using the DOM APIs as they
stand. Which is what you'd want to do, since you expressed a concern about
portability.

If you want to alter the API by some mechanism other than subclassing, you
should be using a different package name so folks know you're doing
something other than a fully compliant DOM.

The other issue seemed to be the copyright notice. I'm told that some
open-source policies can't deal with referencing APIs credited to someone
else, and insisted on being _completely_ open source. My personal opinion
is that this is a bug in their policies. If it's really a problem, the DOM
bindings can be put into the same category as standard language libraries,
which are treated as pre-existing rather than being part of the project's
distribution package.

______________________________________
Joe Kesselman  / IBM Research

Received on Monday, 13 December 1999 15:39:16 UTC