The (lack of) future of Java
I was just reading cbrumme's very interesting Microsoft blog.
I think one thing you can see here is that Microsoft are absolutely clearly trying their standard pattern #1 on Java: let Sun invent it, wait for it to be adopted, design something a little better and much less open, and ram it through the ISV/IT channel. Embrace, extend, extinguish.
(This sounds a bit harsh on CLR, which from my limited reading does seem to be the product of rather more intelligent thought than your average paperclip. But I don't think this is going to be decided primarily on technical merit.)
So the big question is, does Sun have the brains and/or balls to play the one gambit that gives Java a chance of survival: open source Java?
The only commercially interesting operating systems these days are either open source or Microsoft. Sun's Java runtime can't be included in free operating systems like Debian, and Microsoft doesn't (?) ship the current JDK. So Sun have just wilfully excluded themselves from being preinstalled on the two most important platforms. Way to go.
(OK, so failing to be preinstalled is not the end of the world. But it's not helping. Having a standard JRE on each release might make Sun less sloppy about cross-version compatibility than they have been to date.)
posted Wed 17 Mar 2004 in /software/languages/java | link
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