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I'm really fed up of reading the amazingly ignorant blatherings of people who know nothing about Java!

I wish Sun would just announce that, tough beans open sourceys, Java won't be open sourced ever, and then the open source whiners could sod off and use mono exclusively and stop moaning.

It's the attitude of entitlement that gets to me. This, "we have a right to Java!" attitude. The open source "community" doesn't seem to actually write code anymore; it just threatens and whines at companies to release code for them.

It is all based on the highly questionable assumption that open sourced code is necessarily better than closed source, both in terms of technical quality and politically. This is a highly, highly questionable assumption of course. In fact, it seems to be directly contradicted by reality: the best unixes are closed source, the best office suites, the best databases and application servers and compilers and IDEs, yup, all closed source. Strange huh?

For me Java is less about "Sun's control" than about the control of the JCP, an entirely open organisation that decides and implements the future of Java. For all practical purposes, for me Java is a lot more open than .NET because it is much more of an industry standard, has far more open APIs, and is the product of the deliberations and efforts of the entire Java community. Gosh.

I don't want to see an open sourced Java that is there to be split and forked like crazy by Microsoft (again), by IBM (who would if they could get away with it, like a shot, starting by implementing that awfulness SWT) and by various members of the open source community.

I really don't give two hoots about Gnome. Nor do most sensible Java developers (assuming they have even heard about bloody Gnome, in common with most people). If Gnome wants a Garbage Collected language with tons of hooks into their product, well tough, Java isn't it, so stop trying to exert pressure to get something you have no right to, and either write your own, or use mono (and probably split your project and make a mockery of its founding principles, to avoid encumbered commercial libraries) or, gosh, write something yourself. What happens to Gnome is so utterly minor and of no importance to the future of Java or .NET, that nobody gives a shit but the most reality-denying zealots.

It's not that I dislike .NET, even. It's not for me, it will probably be very good for small-to-medium businesses when people finally start adopting it, but that has always been MS's stronghold. It is certainly lacking for the largescale, Enterprise stuff, but so what. .NET and Java really have entirely different domains.

Still, it is amusing how many .NET people seem to hate Java. I can't imagine why, .NET is such a clone of Java in many ways (I am not saying there is anything wrong with being a clone) that it is truly difficult how you can hate one technology and adore another, if not for entirely political reasons.

Meanwhile, Java is one of the most popular platforms today. IBM. Sun,, BEA, and Oracle all use it in their core strategies, and make billions from it. There are millions of Java programmers employed right now. Java job openings in the press have been increasing at a rate much greater than that of C# for the last year, and are sky high above them in terms of absolute level, despite that .NET has supposedly begun adoption. Java is going from strength to strength, with many og the Industry's most powerful players fully behind it. Fact is, it isn't going away any time soon.

My point in saying the above is that you open sourceys can pull out all the nonsense you like, about Sun "choosing control" when it is the JCP that decides, a very open body, about Java needing to be open sourced or it will die (??? - bizarre), and any other amount of rubbish. Whining and throwing tantrums doesn't make any difference to Java, because Java is bigger than the world of Open Source.