[OSM-talk] Moving to Java 1.6 not so easy to swallow

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

I thought I'd reply generally to a few replies in this thread.
Disclaimer: I'm not a JOSM developer, although I have submitted a few
patches and a lot of bugs.

JOSM like most of the OpenStreetMap toolset is developed by
well-meaning developers in their free time. The direction the software
takes is ultimately a function of what the people that submit code
want to work on.

If you think JOSM should do something that it doesn't do now submit
patches, or at least submit a bug. There's a mention in the thread
that JOSM & mkgmap don't run under OpenJDK on NetBSD. Has there been a
bug filed for this? I couldn't find any. How is anyone supposed to fix
it if there at least isn't a report for the issue?

To date I've filed around 300 bugs in JOSM's bugtracker, 170 of these
have been fixed. JOSM's developers do care about issues you encounter,
but they have to *know about them*.

As for the Java 1.6 issue you can continue to run the last Java 1.5
release after the JOSM trunk has moved onto Java 1.6. The developers
are putting effort into making sure that the last 1.5 release is
stable.

Even if you want to follow trunk you can still do that. Just dual-boot
Debian[1] or Ubuntu[2] along with OSX and do your JOSM editing there.
It's trivial to set up a Mac to dual boot (I ran this setup for years
back when Mac hardware was worth the price for me).

1. http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/
2. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCDownloads