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Sun's Simon Phipps Answers ESR On Java
comforteagle writes "Sun's Chief Technology Officer Simon Phipps has answered Eric Raymond's open letter calling on Sun to open source Java." In the quoted response, Phipps says (condensed) "I'd say this is 100 per cent rant... His simplistic accusations don't hold water... If this is the way that Open Source treats its friends, I'd hate to see how it treats its enemies... It's pretty difficult to respond to this. He's so out of touch."
Everything ESR says is a rant! He may be a great programmer, and he may have some great ideas. But even when he's right, he comes across as a sophomoric jackass. When I read one of his diatribes, I feel like I'm sitting in a coffeehouse at 3AM with a bunch of 20 year old philosophy students from a third rate university. So I think "rant" and "out of touch" characterize ESR very well. Grow up, Richard, and get a job (a real one).
Sun needs to do two things.
First, they need to open up the Java standard unconditionally, so that anybody who wants to implement it can do so without restrictions or interference from Sun; right now, the Java 2 platform specifications are covered by licenses, and conforming implementations would probably run into several Sun patents.
Second, because Java has become so bloated and Sun has effectively killed off competing efforts, it is far too late to hope for independent implementations of the Java platform, so if Java is ever going to be an "open standard" in any meaningful sense, Sun has to open source their JVM.
Of course, at this point, I hope they won't. I think technically, Java has become a lost cause. It's easier to replace it than to fix it.