Changes with our official stance

The juggle web-site will remain to be open to J/Unix issues independent of the J version.

Most people will probably know that we, i.e. Gärtner Datensysteme, used to take care of all official J Release 4 packages for all Unix platforms and did the necessary porting work on behalf of J Software Inc (nee Iverson Software Inc).

We decided to stop doing further ports along with the J 4.05 release in Summer 2001. Work on that release took us (me) a very looooong time, altogether about one and a half year. Nobody can be very happy about this: neither we, nor JSoftware, nor the J User base. Many apoplogies about that huge waiting time. My own local ressources are unfortunately not big enough for timely releases as J would deserve it.

Rather than standing in the way any further, I thought it better to resign from this responsibility and to return the porting work to JSoftware were the "local loop" will certainly much more efficient to crank out ports. I think it is a very uplifting to see that Release 5 is developed by JSoftware for both Linux and Windows in parallel.

Our new policy for J support

Gärtner Datensysteme will continue to support the official J4/Unix releases. We use them ourselves, instead of J5. We will fix J4.x bugs reported by you for our own benefit. And we will continue to make J4 ports to new Unix platforms.

We will continue to provide all the fixes/packages we do and further devolpment work on the J engine develop to JSoftware who will be at liberty to redistribute the material, incorporate it into the official J, or simply ignore it. Please understand that we are not entitled to do any public releases ourselves.

Sticking with Release 4 is an effort we can afford, as apposed to invest time into pushing the leading edge. We won't source-license J Rel.5. Instead of moving along with J5 into Java GUI / WD land, we rather decided to concentrate on our own selfish priorities. In a nutshell, these are: documentation, portability across platforms, intergration of J with the Unix way of life, an efficient build environment.

You can review the current status of our own J4 kits and our own supported platforms. Other J Source Licensees are welcome to contact us for cooperation.

We also continue to run our "juggle" support infrastructure for the general public using J/Unix, not matter which version.

The Juggle CVS repository used to be the official reference distribution for the standard script library coming with all J4 releases. We continue to operate the repository, with an extremely conservative (bug fixes only) J4.05 release branch and a separate 4.x-compatible development branch.

First level support for the J4.x/Unix packages

Problems with the J4.x Unix kits? We have on open ear for you. We'll do a first level analysis of your report and give you some feedback on it - quickly and reliably. Check out previous reports to see if your problem has already been solved!

This is a free, public service, related to the packages. If you need specific support for your own J projects, don't hesitate to apply for a professional J support contract with us.