I agree. Sun should not bother trying to get Apple to do this. It's like getting Microsoft to do the Windows build. Why should Microsoft care? They don't - which is why Sun does it. Same philosophy should apply towards Apple.

It's a bit different when you're talking about the JDK... I'd really rather Sun did that for the Mac too, but it requires a lot more knowledge of the intricacies of Mac OS, so I understand wanting to let Apple do it - as long as they actually *do* (they're a bit behind). But for a value-added product like JAI and IIO Tools, there really is no Mac-specific knowledge required... once you can build on Linux and Solaris, you're 95% of the way to building on Mac too.

I certainly understand the resource constraints though... the JAI team is quite small from what I understand. They may not have time to manage a Mac build. So, another alternative is to release the native library source, and let the community do it. That's been talked about for a long time, but for whatever reason it hasn't happened. Assuming there are some kind of license issues with that, a middle ground might be to accept a volunteer from the community to do the Mac build. Sun could then send them - and them only - the source under some kind of nondisclosure, let them build it, then post the result back for everyone. That could sidestep any legal issues w.r.t. opening the source. I'm sure there would be no shortage of volunteers, given the traffic on this list. ;-)

My $0.02...

-Bob

Bob Deen @ NASA-JPL Multimission Image Processing Lab Bob....@jpl.nasa.gov

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fabr...@tidalwave.it wrote: