In ep 262 (the one where Dick's BS detector when crazy) - I got the impression that Dick was asserting that Google are being evil (for a few reasons, such as ignoring the community, not giving enough back etc) - Joe called it business.
I have no affiliation with Google, and its kind of wierd that I feel obliged to defend something that doesn't need my help (!) - but I thought it was a bit unfair. On the contribution side, Google are one of the largest contributors to open source (some have said they are not the largest by some measures) - now that a lot of open source free for all at Sun may stop under Oracle (at least where it makes commercial sense to stop), Google is even more important for open source as a whole (not just Java open source) so they should be encouraged. They contribute to lots of projects, they originate some excellent ones, they increasingly want to open things (like wave) where it makes sense. And on top of that, they provide lots of support and hosting of events (and they ALWAYS cater wonderfully) - if there is a Google office in your sydney - they probably would love to help out your community. They also provide gainful employment to Sun refugees to allow them to continue their great work ;) On the community side: yes I pick up there is a bit of aloofness- but there is no ill intent, its just that there are individuals in the communities that happen to be employed by google. Also, and there is no nice way to say this, but in a popular language/platform as java, the community does tend to be more "average" - this can "cramp their style" so to speak - eg Andoid is what JME could/should have been, and so on... Design by committee isn't great for innovation in general. What I can assume was the real beef, is the slipping away from the one true vision of the "write once run anywhere" vision of Java, and using the JVM everywhere to achieve that. And I guess that is a problem, I don't know if its a good or bad thing. It is what it is. In the java community, I think there has been a lot of mediocrity tolerated in order to get the lowest common denominator for portability. And despite what people say, portability is excellent now, and has been for a long long time. I think the tech community doesn't remember the bad old days of platforms that had nothing in common and it wasn't easy to migrate. But some people are tired of this mediocrity, and just want to get cool things done - and I guess compromises are being made. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
