One Keynote You Won't Want To Miss

At last year's JavaOne, Java Store was announced, which is still in beta if it's not dead yet. The year before, JavaFX was announced, which we still don't see much of it in the real world. Wonder what's going to be new this year other than suing Google.

You're right there Jacek. He better prepare for the uprising ;-)

Well, if there's anyone that might have balls to show the open source geek crowd the middle finger, it's Larry. And it's quite probable that he'll do that. After all the decision to sue every freetard's hunny bunny Google WAS a metaphorical middle finger shown to the geek crowd. And if anything, it seems like Oracle will do what it should: it'll start ignoring geek crowds and blog whiners and recover Java for the business.

Well, where I am Java is doing great with business. Mostly because it has such a rich ecosystem of OSS solutions around it. Spring/Hibernate/etc

No, it's the other way around. Java has such a rich ecosystem of OSS solutions because it's doing great with business. And even then, most, or all, of those solutions were from the beginning created, or later adopted by the business. Or are now long dead.

Spring/Hibernate/etc. have done far more for Java in business than Oracle is ever likely to do.

Fortune telling. In fact Oracle has already done the most important thing: they have assured business that they are going to try and keep a firm grip on the Java platform and won't let it fade into several more or less similar platforms where hardly anyone could tell what is Java and what is not.

This is what the business needs: a responsible, decisive vendor.

it needs to focus on updating language and JVM features

Not really. Some updates to the language and JVM would be certainly nice, but the core of Java's success were always standard APIs, in SE as well as in EE. This is what Oracle needs to focus primarily on.

keep attracting new developers to the platform.

That's what Clojure is for. More seriously: there is only one thing which can really attract significant number of developers to the platform, and it's called Dollar (or Euro, or Pound, or Zloty). Thus, Oracle needs to attract new businesses (ie. users) to the platform and developers will follow. Recent actions assure business that Oracle thinks about it seriously, and treats Java as a potential source of revenue.

Clojure???? Please...both of us will retire before Lisp syntax becomes acceptable to most developers. At least that's what I guess after my team's comments on looking at samples of Clojure syntax....

No, I thought it was an obvoius joke, mentioning Clojure. But let me reitetrate the serious part: if Oracle succeeds at attracting users to the Java platform - which, in this case, means business people because Java on the desktop is already dead - the developers will come attracted by money. If Oracle fails, Java may be a developer heaven many blog weenies claim Clojure is now and noone will use it. Except blog weenies, that is.

Jacek,

Well said. Open Source vendors and advocates that work with the Java platform open standards instead of actively working against them will also for the most part likely be more energized to have a much stronger Java stewart than Sun that can put it's foot down when needed and accelerate the pace of innovation with required resources instead of allowing itself to be blackmailed by narrow-minded, intolerant interests.

Cheers,

Reza

* Larry showing his middle finger to people who might boo him for suing Google.

- Quite frankly - I hope that is exactly how it literally plays out :-). Other than being unquestionably entertaining, it's just deserts for people arrogant enough to not take the time to listen to differing opinion carefully and being pretentous enough to believe theirs is the only opinion worth being heard...

Cheers,

Reza

Also thanks to Opensource Java, The JVM got lots of development and people interested implementing another languages on top of the JVM as JRuby, Jython, Scala, Clojure, Phantom, etc if Sun did not open source the JVM it could be difficult to target the JVM as a multi-language VM. So if you get more languages on your VM it gets more richer. Thanks to OSS, Thanks to Apache, Thanks to Eclipse foundation, Thanks to Spring Source and thanks to JBoss and thanks to RedHat and thanks many many more Java is now the number one Language.

If was not because Spring and Hibernate already Java was phased out as another cobol in the beginning of the 2000's

Not really, server side Java was on the rise since 1998 and Hibernate development started only in 2001, Spring was even later. But this is not my point. My point is that, even if the authors of Spring and Hibernate decided that Java without closures and macros is not for them and chose instead to wait until Paul Graham releases Arc someone else would write similar frameworks. Exactly because Java is so popular.

By the way, Bruce Tate's Beyond Java was published in 2005. He was predicting more or less what you're now. I like to read it for a good laugh from time to time.

The end of Sun, The failure of JavaFX, The departure of James Gosling as the father of Java and now the announcement of Oracle vs Google, I think Java and the Java community got hurt and a lot. 

You're ignoring reality. Java is on the rise again and it hardly looks like the lawsuit could hurt it. Of course, blog weenie freetards are yelling out loud - not only their hunny bunny don't be evil Google is being sued, but it is so for patent infringement. And every freetard knows that patents are just as evil as Microsoft of old (and Apple of today).

Yeah Yeah Yeah Java will continue for another 5 years but as new cobol just for the legacy,

It's quite funny that Cobol was more popular than this shiny new Python well into 2007 and than Ruby even two years longer.

The JVM got lots of development and people interested implementing another languages on top of the JVM as JRuby, Jython, Scala, Clojure, Phantom

So? Those are just toys that hardly anyone uses for production. Oracle should stop any support for this "multilanguage" bullshit right away. If anyone wants to implement a JVM language for their diploma thesis, that's fine, but there never was any business value to it. JVM should be optimized to run real life Java code and not to make the implementation of another SLDJ any easier.

jacek szymanski, I would agree with you all this at 2005 and when Java ownership was SUN but now we are at 2010 ,5 years after of Open Source Java in it is full potential and Oracle that we know is a destructor of what they acquired. The world is changing is not anymore the 90's, nobody wants a 100% proprietary driven platform anymore, Why .Net didnt have the potential that Microsoft wished?!. All this Oracle and Java mess is to late really, Open sourcing Java in that time was a very big effort also everybody agreed it in that time that was getting little late. By the way Bruce Tate is a good reading maybe what he predicted was little bit to early but now it could be possible be true. I dont consider a freetard my self and not even a closetard also lol, I pay for my IDE Intellij, I pay for components for Swing, If Spring had a price for medium to small business, I will pay it for get also support but they decide to go the free as in beer anyway. I think you dont understand what really means Open Source, OSS is You can have the code to modify to your needs but could be the author of the code to charge you a fee for using it. So Open Source is also a business and you can get a profit for it as closed source systems, the only difference is you allow your customer to modify the source for their own benefit. So if you go out of business your customer can continue modify or maintainece the code cause your customer depends all their business on your code and you cant let them fall with you, Dont you?. Anyway, Reeza have good points in his comment.

Maybe because the ME/SE flavour of Java turned out to be a failure on mobile devices? And Google decided to take the best parts of it (the core language) and compliment it with alternate pieces (different UI toolkit, different resource mechanism) that were simply better.

I believe it's called evolution in the real world. As a result we have millions of devices shipping with Java on them and Java on the way to becoming the dominant language for mobile development.

And Oracle want stop that momentum? As a Java developer I can't say I find that action to be in my best interest.

The world is changing is not anymore the 90's, nobody wants a 100% proprietary driven platform anymore

I'd rather say nobody cares. What businesses want is a development platform provided by a responsible, strong and stable vendor. 

Why .Net didnt have the potential that Microsoft wished?!.

To seriously use .net you have to have Windows and to seriously use it in business you have to have server licenses. Oh, and for serious server-side you'd also need SQL licenses. 

And yet .NET does have a potential. Not as much as MS wanted to, but it's strong number two today and I don't see it changing anytime soon.

Open sourcing Java in that time was a very big effort also everybody agreed it in that time that was getting little late

No, it was all too early. In fact, it should never have happened. It did, and it brought no advantage to Java or Sun whatsoever. Sad to have seen Sun stock prices fall shortly after, all the way down to the merger talks with IBM. They should have perhaps listened to finance guys, not to blog freetards.

Open Source is also a business and you can get a profit for it as closed source systems, the only difference is you allow your customer to modify the source for their own benefit.

No, you can't. While it is theoretically possible, in reality as soon as you sell the first copy of your open source program, the customer is free to resell it, sell multiple copies or just give it away for free. I have yet to see a successful business selling open source licenses.

 

Are developers sad and dejected because C isn't a profitable business venture?

It is. Maybe not on your usual PC, but there are many firms selling commercial C toolchains which probably means that C can be a profitable venture.

Do you really believe that companies will keep writing applications in Java if they believe there is any risk of being sued by Oracle?

Do you really think there'd be any risk of being sued for writing in Java? Google is being sued for writing own pseudo-Java while routing around rules set for mobile Java development.

Yes, I do believe that companies will keep using Java if anyone that tries to introduce such fragmentation into the Java world will bear risk of being sued by Oracle. Don't you?

You talk about C. Look at any sufficiently big C program: there are so many #ifdefs you hardly see actual code. Do you want Java degraded to something alike? I do not and I'm glad Oracle has balls and means to defend Java.

The surest way to kill Java is to wage a high profile legal battle over it.

Oh yes, just like Sun did ten years ago when Microsoft tried to do what Google is doing now. It surely killed Java.

But I forgot: Microsoft was always the bad guy and Google is always the hunny bunny don't be evil hugtoy.