Several people wrote to discussion@fsfeurope.org:
[Java is a trap; we should avoid it; alternatives?]
Many of the developers who work on "escaping the Java trap" met at this year's FOSDEM in Brussels. Mark Wielaard and I gave a talk, describing the motivation and current state of GNU Classpath and the various free VMs [1]. The slides are not very technical, but might serve as an overview for newcomers. IMHO, the "motivation" section might be particularly relevant to what has been said so far on the discussion@fsfeurope.org mailing list.
There were also several other, more technical talks about the state and some specifics of particular VMs, such as gcj or SableVM. For an overview to all talks, please have a look at [2].
GNU Classpath [3] is really appreciating any help. So, if anyone wants to help out, please contact classpath@gnu.org, or write directly to Mark Wielaard mark@klomp.org, who maintains the project.
[1] http://www.dandelis.ch/people/brawer/articles/classpathFeb2004/ [2] http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/events/fosdem04.html [3] http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/
Best regards,
-- Sascha
Sascha Brawer, brawer@dandelis.ch, http://www.dandelis.ch/people/brawer/