James Gosling’s Thoughts on Java – Liferay Community

I just got back from our first Liferay Roadshow in Amsterdam yesterday and gave a talk about how identity and interactions are changing due to paradigm shifts in technology and corporate culture. I’ll post about that some other time, but I did talk to someone considering Liferay for a business application and they asked the inevitable “what’s the future of Java?” question. 

I told him that I don’t think Oracle will sabotage Java because almost 100% of their business relies on it. Then I recalled an email I had in my inbox about James Gosling’s keynote at the Server Side conference recently. 

Mr. Gosling’s way of expressing the sentiment: “No clue what Larry (Ellison) will do. But he won’t shoot himself. I hope.”

In the talk, he explained, “It’s in their own self-interest to not be really aggressively stupid, but it’s been clear that it’s been something of a learning experience. It’s been clear that they didn’t understand what they bought, what it meant to deal with communities and people and all the arguing and discussion and consensus building that’s involved in communities.”

What I find most interesting about his comments is his acknowledgement of the nuances of an inclusive, eco-system-based business model, one that the machinery of the Oracle corporation isn’t as suited to accommodate. Of course that to me is an indication of the divide between modern and post-modern approaches to business and the fundamental shifts going on (with Oracle one of the best representatives of the modern and Sun a failed attempt at the post-m) but there’s no time to get into all that nonsense. 🙂 

Anyway, here’s the rest of the article, which is a light and informative read.