Next week I will be attending JavaOne, the first organized by Oracle, and I am really looking forward to it. The last couple of JavaOne conferences were pretty lame in terms of key Java announcements. This year will be Oracle’s chance to set the vision for the future of Java.
I have high expectations Oracle will do right for Java. Oracle is professionally managed company that knows how to make money. They are going to do things differenly from Sun but that will/can be goodness. Although, I admit their lawsuit against Google is not a great signal to the community.
Next week, here is what I would like to hear from Oracle. [Note: FWIW, these are my own views and don’t represent any official view of the Eclipse Foundation.]
Stop JavaFX, please. I have never understood JavaFX. Sun had no hope and so far no momentum for this technology. Oracle should just politely say it was a bad idea and move on. Use the resources to provide better technology for Java programmers. Trust me, no one will miss it.
Announce Java 7 Plans. Java 7 has been this lost puppy with no home for a long time. Publish the plan and keep to it. Show the future, lead by example. My vote would be to announce Plan B next week.
Make Apache Happy. The long standing issue over the field of use restriction for Apache Harmony’s use of the TCK needs to be resolved. Resolving this one issue would be a HUGE win with the open source community.
Promote OpenJDK. There is a lot of great stuff going on in the OpenJDK community. Captialize on it, tell people about, invest in it, promote the hell out of it. You also need to fix the governance for it to really thrive. Establish a community board and governance charter that makes it truly open. Sun was never really open with OpenJDK but it was still succeeding. Do better than Sun and make it open and great.
Merge Java ME and Java SE. Java in mobile needs to be re-energized. Please don’t announce at JavaOne that their are billions of devices using Java ME and all is well. All is not well. Bring the two code bases together and make it easier for a wider group of developers to write applications for mobile and enterprise. Regardless, shake things up for Java ME
That is it. Solve these points with concrete solutions and Java will be on the path to a great future.
btw, curious to know what else Oracle needs to announce?
