On 12/02/2010 09:24 PM, CKoerner wrote:
Do you stand behind Oracle?
Fortunately the corporates producing the technology I use aren't neither my wife, nor my friends, nor my religion, nor my favourite football soccer, nor my favourite political party. I just evaluate them as an engineer, with a pros-cons balance. Of course, the attitude towards the open source is a relevant part of that, but only a part of the balance. I don't care whether the CEO of the producer is nice or not, greedy or generous, and I don't believe that any corporate has "growing open source" as its main target, eventually being it only a mean to make profits. Oh, BTW, I make computer programs mainly to make profits too, even though I also have fun out of it. I usually don't make any moral evaluation of a corporate, because it's meaningless. I'd contrast corporates who smell too much of monopoly, but at the moment there's none (in any case, I'd rather think of Google and Apple, not of Oracle and Microsoft). In fact, I used Windows in the past, I might as well use it today (I have it installed on my computers) and if I don't is not because I hate Gates or Ballmer (actually I don't), but because I don't think it fits my needs.
The basic point is that fifteen years ago, when I made some strategic technology choices that ended up in the Java direction, Microsoft was just producing shit, being Windows '95 their most sophisticated product and Visual Basic their most advanced programming language. Today Microsoft is much better positioned with their technologies, but I'm not the kind of engineer who like to move to other platforms, and in any case I'd stay with other languages in the Java ecosystems since I've got a huge expertise with it. In addition, while today I think it's fair to say that both C# and Java have comparable openness attitudes (both are basically open implementations of a technology, but not completely open standards), Java has still got a huge ecosystem that beats C# pants off, and 90% of that ecosystem is made of genuine open source (such ASF, Spring, etc...). I've always found a solution to my engineering problems within the Java ecosystem, and it's so still today, even with my current biggest customer who's got a product that needs a huge range of different technologies, both on the client and the server (probably mobile is coming too). So, if I had to remade a decision from scratch today, while I think that the gap has been narrowed, I'd still pick the Java ecosystem over the C# one.
So, no, I don't feel the "do you stand behind Oracle" question has got any meaning; I have a relationship with it as part of the community (since they however have a relationship with the community), and I'll support or criticize their decisions and technologies one-by-one, in function of what is my interest, my customers' interest and, being part of a community, the general community interest.
-- Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere." java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici - www.tidalwave.it/people [email protected] -- 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.
