Re: Why favor SWT over Swing?

Hi Denis,

> >   Basically, Swing is not open-source and is
> > controlled by Sun. Thus, you can't distribute it
> > freely. On the other hand SWT is truly open-source
> > using a OSI-certified license, that is, the Common
> > Public License (CPL). See
> > http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php and
> > http://www.eclipse.org/legal/legalfaq.html for
> more
> > info.
> 
> Do you mean that the swing stuff is patented and
> nobody can reproduce it, or that the issue is just
> that nobody had the time up to now to rewrite it? It
> have not found an answer to this question, nor on
> theserverside.com, nor on java.sun.com site.
> If the java Classpath project and gcj has been able
> to
> strive, I guess that it is not unlawful to reproduce
> a
> "java" compatible JVM (except that the word java
> should not be used to refer to the product). Is
> swing
> covered by others IP restrictions that the ones of
> the
> main J2SE?

   I think Swing is much like the Windows API, that
is, you can look at the code but you're not allowed to
touch it. Only Sun is allowed to change the code and
distribute it.

   I think it's not unlawful to clone Swing using a
clean room approach (that is, without looking at Sun's
code) similar to lets say Wine for cloning the Windows
API.

  However, as far as I can tell the Classpath project
tries to get AWT up and running. I think they haven't 
started on cloning Swing yet and I'm not sure if they
ever will get to it.

  You might also wonna check out wx4j (Java bindings
for the wxWindows UI toolkit) @ http://www.wx4j.org
for another alternative.

  - Gerald


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