Here’s an interesting Q&A James Gosling on Open Sourcing Suns Java Platform Implementations.
There are other articles out there, but they really all amount to the same questions and musings about Sun, Java, Open Source, etc ad nauseum, so I thought the short interview with James Gosling, in which he makes at least a perfunctory answer to the proverbial Frequently Asked Questions, was as good as any other link.
So, how about Open Source Java, anyways? I have no real constructive comments to offer. Java is probably reviled as often as it is praised, and I’ve probably done some of both in my time. It’s definitely the ubiquitous “enterprise” programming language, and it shows no sign of being unseated any time soon.
At the least, I can’t see any downside to this turn of events; to some camps the news is a non-event and will not affect what they do at all. To others, it will be big news, perhaps even a major asset for open source. I know Richard Stallman has said on at least one occasion that an Open Source Free Java platform was something that GNU/Linux needed… so if you’re the sort of person who has to say “GNU/Linux” whenever you mention your favorite OS, this is probably good news to you as well.
Everyone wins, nobody loses. That’s good, right? ;-)
