Where this argument kind of falls down is the personal marketing angle. Being responsible for some major java feature is a massive boon on your CV. I'm also going to presume for a moment people are a bit like me and money is not your only motivator; making your mark on the world by making cool stuff people want to use motivates just fine.
The one who has no motivation here perhaps is sun, though even there I'd argue they are making a big mistake in waffling on spending resources in this area: java is very rightly bound to your future. I presume you renamed your stock ticker for a reason (this is a bit out of date now that we have snoracle). Your comparison with C# didn't make any sense whatsoever to me. They are in _exactly_ the same boat. They are both free and open source, they are both backed by a large corporate entity (microsoft v. suncle), they are both the basis of a bunch of for-pay tools (windows development boxed, solaris big iron servers), and they both have a decently sized community that want changes from time to time (holds true for any non-fossilized programming language). The biggest difference I can see is that microsoft is spending way more resources on the core language itself, whereas suncle is so far spending similar resources, but in other places. On Sep 24, 1:17 pm, Robert Lally <[email protected]> wrote: > After all the discussions about Coin, Java 7, closures, participation, and > the JCP I'm left with the following understanding. > 1. There's no shortage of ideas. > 2. There is a shortage of analysis and implementations. > 3. There are no companies that have a vested interest, or a potential ROI, > in implementing the massive pile of ideas that already exist. Companies do > what they can, but resources everywhere are limited and it is irresponsible > to spend shareholder money on projects with no clear return. > 4. The open source ideal of a developer scratching his/her own itch doesn't > apply because "I think a closure here would save me four lines of code so > I'm going to spend 20 hours a week for the next four years making it happen" > doesn't make sense. If an individual did make this commitment it would be > out of altruism, not motivated self interest. > 5. There are few individual developers who have the time, motivation and > skills necessary to investigate, analyse and implement the massive pile of > ideas that already exist. The subset of them who also have nothing better to > do with their time is a vanishingly small number. > > So, no-one is to blame, no one has acted unreasonably or in bad faith or > with malice. The people with the money don't have the motivation, the people > with the skills have other responsibilities or are already doing as much as > they possibly can. > > As I compare the evolution of Java with the evolution of C#/.NET I'm left > with the feeling that the problem here is the open source/free nature of the > Java tools world. C# has changed and evolved, in recent years, faster than > Java. Microsoft has a vested interest in change and improvement - they sell > their tools, so they make money out of making and selling better tools. > Improvement/change leads to sales which finances farther development. This > virtuous cycle (if you deem it to be so) seems to be what we're missing. > > Have we, by reducing the cost of the tools we love, also reduced the value > to be gained by improving them to zero? I'm not really sure, but I think it > is possible. > > Rob Lally. > > -- > Blog :http://robertlally.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
