Don't believe I mentioned the word conspiracy or even tried to
represent any argument as such. Amazed at how the responses have
represented the "crackpot" perspective so quickly. I don't believe
Sun and Inprise conspired to block blackdown out. I think Inprise
wants it's own presence for its own jdk. Period. They made a
business decision to "roll their own" rather than pursue a
collaborative relationship with the individuals who had written the
code that Inprise was basing their jdk upon. Not Inprise-blackdown,
but Inprise. Simply that Inprise doesn't want to dilute their brand,
especially with the market, which might view an association with
blackdown as a liability (being composed of, as you stated in an
earlier posting, "volunteers".)
To strengthen this argument, look at the perception of the public to a
little company named RedHat. They went from giving away software, to
charging for free software. The public went from skeptical when the
software was free, to supportive/enthusiastic/euphoric when the
software cost money and they offered a plan to support the software.
Blackdown gives away software and is viewed as a collective of
hobbyists. That's bad from the financial and business perspective
where the question invariably is raised as to "who will support the
software when we need a fix and the person that wrote the code is one
of the hobbyists". I don't think Inprise wanted to ever have to field
that question. I could be wrong, but if I am, I'd like to know why.
My opinions are based on years of working in the industry and being
involved in discussions involving brand representation and issues of
brand dilution. To me, Inprise had no incentive to involve blackdown
in their release, so they didn't involve blackdown. If my opinions
are wrong, I'm more than happy to admit it and learn from my
mistake(s). Just somebody point out the facts so I can understand.
But calling my arguments or the arguments of others "conspiracy
theory" does nothing to further discussion on the matters at hand.
> 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.
Never said you weren't part of the linux community. My raising issue
with you means that you're a peer in this community. If I felt
otherwise I would let you know directly.
Would appreciate it if you would consider addressing my main point,
which is that fracturing the development efforts is divisive and in
the long run potentially more harmful to the future of java on Linux.
You have an opinion on that, I'd like to hear it. To me, the prospect
of collaboration was worth more than a couple of phone calls.
cheers,
Mike
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