There's been plenty of talk of Sun's potential unravelling and what that could mean for Java, and said talk often involves potential merger suitors for the company. Most of these are long-established Silicon Valley players (latest candidate: EMC), and while such a merge might happen, maybe that's the wrong way to think about who's going to be the major player in Java's life coming forward.

JavaWorld editor Athen O'Shea thinks that SpringSource will be key to Java's future, and he's a pretty smart guy, so maybe I (and you) should start paying attention. Now, SpringSource isn't going to buy up Sun like it did G2One, but consider this: SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson, who once famously compared Sun's JCP to the sclerotic final days of the Soviet regime, was recently elected as an executive committee member on that same body. As he told attendees at Qcon last week, "When perestroika and glasnost come along, you've got to stand up and be counted. I think there is work to do, and I want to see whether I and SpringSource can further those changes." Johnson in fact encouraged further engagement with the process that defines the language: "I think that it's too easy to blame Sun for the fact that the community doesn't participate more fully. It baffles me, frankly, that not just individuals, but companies, with immense investments in Java don't participate. Openness doesn't really work if there's no participation. If the process becomes more democratic, people are going to have to stand up and cast their votes."

SpringSource -- and other, smaller companies like it -- could become a catalyst for change within the existing Java Community Process. It could make the process unwieldier at first, but it will definitely allow the platform to keep moving if Sun can't or won't supply the energy for it.