A few weeks ago I discussed the idea that JavaFX might, in practice, be Swing 2.0, in that it would be Sun's primary Java UI toolkit from here on in. This is interesting and perhaps quite healthy in the long run -- but like all major shifts, it's probably one that should be laid out explicitly for stakeholders so they can start planning for it now. Instead, some folks are suffering some legitimate anxiety about the move, simply because it seems to be happening through inaction, and without guidance for developers. The comments on that article I linked to are particularly instructive, as they get to the heart of what exactly it means for libraries to be a part of the core language when it comes to a fully open source project like Java. Those are issues that will come to the fore more and more if Sun is less able or willing to serve as the language's chief steward.

In the meantime, it looks like some folks are anxious about JavaFX's licensing, which is not open source (and, according to Sun, never will be, entirely). In fact, it seems that current licensing doesn't even allow you to distribute JavaFX classes in your application's JAR files, which strikes me as ... odd, or a miscommunication between development and legal, or something.

This is my last post before I take a week off for the holidays -- see you all next week!