I thoroughly agree with Nathan's assessment--it makes no sense to believe
that Sun and/or Inprise somehow *want* this bad publicity. Quite frankly,
given the nature of the lack of responsiveness of the Blackdown team
themselves (no offense, guys, but this is simply personal observation) to
various postings on this list (including one of my own, some time back)
offering to help fix some bug or another, I'm fully ready to believe the
"there was no response" story--it reeks with credibility.
Simply pointing fingers and creating conspiracy theories does nothing to
advance our position as Linux/Java users. This is the wonderful thing about
the capitalist system--if you don't care for Sun's or Inprise's attitude
towards us, or any other community, stop using their products. Use a
competitor's, and encourage your friends to do so, as well. In time, if
enough people agree with you, then either the commercial company will change
their attitude, or else they will go bankrupt and die. It's far more likely
that they'll do some sort of adjustment to their policies before allowing
themselves to go under--witness what's going on with the tobacco companies
in this country, as evidence.
For my money, I'll download the Inprise product (I have a particular beef
with Borland as a company--why'd you kill OWL just before my OWL books came
out?--but that's neither here nor there), evaluate it, and see if it works
for me. If the Blackdown port is better, great. If the Inprise port is
better, great. If I do my own port, and I prefer that, instead, great.
Whatever solution solves the problem, is what works for me.
Ted Neward
Java Instructor, DevelopMentor ( http://www.develop.com )
http://www.javageeks.com/~tneward
-----Original Message-----
From: Nathan Meyers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Paolo Ciccone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: Mike Ajemian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Friday, December 10, 1999 8:21 PM
Subject: Re: another possibility wrt the press-release.
>Paolo Ciccone wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 10, 1999 at 02:43:47PM -0500, Mike Ajemian wrote:
>>
>> > 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.)
>>
>> Sorry to disappoint your "conspiracy" theory, I really mean it in a
>> good way, but we really don't care who provides the JDK. If Blackdown
>> tomorrow shows a JDK that outperform ours we will be happy like hell,
>> it will make JBuilder and JDataStore run faster. Great ! Same thing if
>> it comes from Sun or IBM.
>
>
>I'd like to add, as one who has no connection with Inprise or Sun, that
>I continue to be astounded at accusations like this. There's a real
>simple story here: Inprise had a critical business need, they approached
>Blackdown about collaboration (that's called "due diligence"), Blackdown
>didn't return their calls, so Inprise did some work on its own. I don't
>understand the need to explain what happened with complicated conspiracy
>theories.
>
>Let's consider an alternate theory. Why has Blackdown visibility been
>poor? Why did they fail to respond to Inprise? It's obvious! Blackdown
>wants to own the Java/Linux franchise and make its members fantastically
>wealthy on a Blackdown IPO. Ridiculous? Of course. But it makes as much
>sense as some of the other theories flying around.
>
>Another insight to consider: Linux is hot! Everything having to do with
>Linux is hot. Why in the world would organizations like Sun or Inprise
>make any effort to repudiate the Linux community? When Sun failed to
>acknowledge Blackdown in its PR, it screwed up. In fact, it screwed up
>even more by not making a *big deal* of the Blackdown connection. It is
>a PLUS, not a MINUS, to associate your name with the Linux community,
>and these bizarre and complicated explanations of why Sun and Inprise
>would want to hide that connection just don't wash.
>
>Finally, consider that the proof is in the pudding. What has come out of
>this horrific conspiracy? Well, for the first time, Linux users have a
>JDK with a working JPDA, and a JIT that's faster and better than the
>long-broken sunwjit. And what do you have to pay to use this new JDK?
>Nothing.
>
>So what happens next? Let's see, Inprise has a working JPDA and a great
>JIT, and Blackdown has solved the native threading problems. Maybe it's
>time to move past the accusations and conspiracy theories and start to
>explore how to work together. We'll all benefit from it.
>
>
>Nathan
>
>
>>
>> As anybody can immagine having to port the JDK is a big PITA
>> especially since we had to do that while working on other two projects
>> (JBuilder Solaris and JBuilder Foundation). We literally spent the
>> nights in the Borland Campus.
>>
>> > 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.
>>
>> Wrong again, we believe we have something that can improve the
>> experience of the developers on Linux and on other platforms as well.
>>
>> The thing that is funny for me is that you, and other people on this
>> list, refer to who works in Inprise or other companies like we are not
>> part of the Linux community. I still have the Slackware 0.99 disks and
>> the same is for many of us in the Borland campus. Linux is exciting
>> for us and we have people that rooted for it for years, me being one
>> of them. Sure we work for a commercial company, does it make us
>> "bad". I don't think so, let us contribute to this community, we are
>> doing our best and you'll judge if it's worth your attention and money
>> or not. In the case of JBuilder Foundation, as you ca see, we are
>> giving it away for free.
>>
>> --
>> Paolo Ciccone
>> JBuilder dev.team
>>
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