Java's Future: Is There a Future Without Gosling?

[Brad Jones]

"Just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good" - Gosling



Those are the words of James Gosling who left Oracle and thus left Java on April 2nd. Oracle without Gosling is like C# without Anders Hejlsberg. This is not good news if you are using Java.

For more on what Gosling had to say, check out the InternetNews blog, Oracle Loses Java Creator James Gosling.

It seems he didn't leave for another job, which seems to say a lot too.

While Java could easily survive and thrive under Oracle's ownership, it would have a much better chance of continuing forward successfully if it retained those that have driven it to where it is today. If there were Vegas odds for the future success of Java, I believe they would have recently gotten worse.

What do you think? Does this hurt Java's future?





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[nuzzle]

"Just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good" - Gosling

The controversey seems to be over the Java community process (where it's decided which features should be in or out of Java). It seems like Oracle has shortened the rein and taken more control. In my view that's only natural. After all Java was up for sale and they bought it. The real issue here is that Java is proprietary in the first place. No community process in the world can change that. The owner always has the last word and during Sun's ownership that meant Gosling called the shots. Now that's changed and I can understand he doesn't like it.

If founders stays too long they tend to become a liability rather than an asset. Sooner or later the founder's vision goes out of tune with reality. I feel it's good for both Java and Gosling that they go their separate ways now and this is exactly the right time. There will be separation anxiety of course but eventually both will benefit from moving on.

My hope is that Gosling takes part in the creation of a new language. Non-proprietary this time. With his intimate knowledge of the strenghs and shortcomings of Java he's exactly the right person to come up with something truely extraordinary. But his role would be different this time of course. It would be more like Stroustrup's (the founder of C++).

To me it's deeply disturbing that both major modern OO languages, Java and C#, are owned by companies rather than by the programming community. Gosling could be the right person to bring about a change.