|
|
Featured White Papers
- Why choose an Open Source BPM?
- 10 FAQs on Business Process Management
- Best Practices for Getting Started with BPM
- Free Your Devs From The Pain Of Java Redeploys
- Increase Velocity 40% by Using JRebel
- What Developers Want: The End of Application Redeploys
- Developer Productivity Report: Java Tools, Tech, Devs, and Data
- Coding with JRebel: Java Forever Changed
- Utilizing Fast Testing to Transform Java Development
- Do You Really Get Classloaders?
- Pragmatic Continuous Delivery with Jenkins, Nexus, and LiveRebel
- Your Next Java Web App: Less XML, No Long Restarts, Fewer Hassles
- Coding with JRebel, Java Forever Changed
- 2012 Developer Productivity Report: Java Tools, Tech, Devs, and Data
Java To Go
Java drama! Gossip! Excitement! All here! Got a juicy tidbit that you think should go in Java To Go? E-mail me at jfruh@jfruh.com, or contact me on Twitter as jfruh!
Dear James Gosling: It's way past t-shirts
Submitted by Josh Fruhlinger on Tue, 08/31/2010 - 00:25.I respect James Gosling in several ways: both as a technical whiz and as a guy who managed to rise pretty far up in a big corporation without losing his soul or sense of idealism. Google may be using its newfound position as bullying victim for PR advantage, but Gosling has as near as I can tell no financial axe to grin in the conflict, and is motivated mostly by his vision for the platform he created. (In fact, if he has Oracle stock left over from his Sun compensation, he may be acting against his own financial self interest.)
But Gosling's latest move -- selling t-shirts asking Oracle to live up to its 2007 pledge to "release Java" -- is about as quixotic as you can get without actually tilting at windmills. Gosling wants JavaOne attendees to wear them to send a message at JavaOne, and if people as suggested wear them to "spend...quality time with an Oracle salesperson," they might succeed in making said salesperson feel uncomfortable. But the idea that they'll somehow change Oracle's trajectory strikes me as ludicrous.
The specific "pledge" that the t-shirts refer to pretty well exemplifies how little room for sentiment there is in modern corporate life. At a 2007 JCP meeting, Oracle proposed that the JCP be spun off from Sun as an "open independent vendor-neutral Standards Organization where all members participate on a level playing field." This was a useful suggestion at the time for Oracle, because it would have reduced Sun's power over Java and increased the say other companies (including Oracle) had over the platform. Oracle wanted Sun to have less power not due some ideological stance about what control in the abstract it felt the owner of Java should have, but because it would make things easier (and more profitable) for Oracle. Now that Oracle is the one who owns Java, it has no more interest in the proposed arrangement, because it would no longer be beneficial to Oracle's interests. That's the kind of hard-headed thinking that you don't influence with t-shirts.
Still, it can't hurt to wear them, can it? Check out Gosling's CafePress store if you're so inclined.