“The Java saga that SUN has led is a unique success story. 11 years ago, SUN (a hardware company!) successfully put in place the conditions that led to this multi-billion multi-vendor open ecosystem. More than a decade after, Java is not only alive but is leading the middleware space. Such an open and successful ecosystem is unique in IT. Sun’s constant inability to monetize that ecosystem might be one of the reasons why it has been successful: you don’t want the referee to mark goals and, even less, to win the match.
As this ecosystem matured, a move was required to rejuvenate it. That’s what SUN just did with this announcement.
Congratulations to those of you at SUN who have been listening to the market and pushing for that courageous move. I know this wasn’t an easy one. A few months back, you made the commitment to Open Source all of your software. We were all hoping you would start with Java, but that is not quite how it happened and that is where you finally ended. But here we go and that is probably one of the smartest moves you could do to further extend the ecosystem.
Tighten your seat belts, the Java ecosystem is about to move full throttle ahead!”
So speaks Sacha, a good guy a t JBoss.
Its a lot of fun watching the different views taken on Sun’s move. The GPL decision has forked the industry, if not the codebase.
I agree with Sacha that Java just got a big boost. Innovation happens elsewhere – so I look forward to seeing it.
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