> "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
> stupidity." (Hanlon's Razor?)
> PR folks working for large organizations typically don't have two
> clues to rub together - not only about techical details and
> development politics, but also about what is really important. I
> wouldn't be surprised if Sun's and Inprise's PR people genuinely
> thought that the Blackdown group consisted entirely of Sun employees
> and paid ghostwriters.
Hate to disagree with you, but PR folks worth their salt aren't called
"spin doctors" for nothing. Microsoft and Sun have become the
behemoth's they are by putting together pr that represents the company
or their products in a very positive light and introduces doubt about
competitors or competing products. I mean, Microsoft didn't get to be
big by writing the best software (anybody with me on that?). They
used marketing and public relations to induce people to think that
Microsoft was way better than everybody else. Good pr people don't
have to "get" tech, although it helps, they really have to know how to
position/represent the company or organization in a way that the
market desires, winning approval with consumer $$$ and market share.
Sounds a lot like politics to me, <shudder>.
This whole scenario stinks bad to me. Individuals that spend years
writing code don't deserve to have their code base passed on to
somebody else and forked. I don't care how difficult communication
was, especially since it sounds like Sun wasn't all that helpful to
the blackdown team at critical times. I actually think that's part of
the spin (ala Microsoft/Netcraft's assault on Linux, "nobody responded
to our postings" crap). The community will suffer as 2 products that
should be on the same code base are now completely separate products
(which Inprise likely wants since it doesn't dilute their product with
an Inprise-Blackdown label.)
Bottom line is Inprise wants presence in the linux community and Sun
wants a greater Java presence. I don't think they're going after the
current linux base, they're going after the converts to linux (a large
number that's growing fast) who aren't going to be familiar with or
even care about this issue. I believe the decision was made pretty
high up to accept this as a reasonable loss, the blackdown piss-off,
and a greater gain vis-a-vis perception of a better, more stable jdk
from a commercial source. Like Linux and RedHat. "The market" is
validating Linux because a commercial company is behind it.
My .02, fwiw.
cheers,
Mike
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