>Major issue imho. Sun/JavaSoft really has a _big_ problem. They're
>trying to develop both a (1) freely available standards (most of them
>with a reference implementation) and (2) software that is supposed to
>bring in money, all at the same time.
That's why I say that Sun's actions look to me like a company that
hasn't quite figured out a clear strategy to commercialize Java. It
feels to me like there's a struggle going on inside, between
traditional corporate managers who say "oooh, proprietary, closed,
must charge lots of money" and a bunch of very clueful engineers who
are saying "open systems, make it free, let it grow."
Or to put it harshly - Java is the first big new idea we've seen from
Sun in awhile. Suddenly, it's caught on, but they don't know how to
capitalize off of it.
The good news is the forces of openness seem to be slowly winning out.
The release of Jini with source is a big thing. So is the
semi-official support for Linux.
>What Oracle believes, and what Marima believes, and what I personally
>believe is that there should be one standard and lightweight Java
>platform, containing only a set of core Java packages (no AWT, no
>Swing, no CORBA, no RMI), having well-defined behaviour, suited for
>realtime and multithreading/multitasking applications.
The problem is there are several smaller Javas. PersonalJava, at least
two different Sun embedded Java systems, etc.
You're right about size, btw. JDK 1.2 is about 3 times as big as JDK
1.1 (which itself was twice as big as JDK 1.0). A really nice
reference for a perspective on all of Java is the "Java Developer's
Almanac", a pocket dictionary sized reference to all of Java 1.2b3. It
has a listing of every class and member and which version of Java they
came in, whether they're in Personal Java, etc. Also a summary in the
back of language growth statistics.
I find it useful. It's $15 from Amazon,
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201379678/nelsonminar
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
. . . . . . . . http://www.media.mit.edu/~nelson/
