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Could've been a contender, but too late now
by Lambda on Thu 8th Mar 2007 21:29 UTC
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Sun has always had two big problems with regards to their promotion of Java. One is that they never seemed to grasp that to some people the JVM and libraries are more important than Java (the language). The second thing is that they've always continued to pimp Swing as the ultimate answer to the GUI.

Sun employees contribute to Gnome, but have they ever even sponsored anyone to work on Java-Gnome bindings? Not that I recall, but correct me if I'm wrong. But Sun never seemed to grok that nobody wants Swing next to the native GUI. I suspect some at Sun have realized it, but political forces within the company have always supressed it in order to pimp Swing. Hell, for years Sun didn't even care about the desktop. They found their niche on the server, and was happy with that.

Sun also never realized that people (especially in the open source desktop world) are interested in other languages on top of the JVM. It's always been about Java (the language), instead of Java (the platform). .NET/Mono has always been better in that regard.

So years ago Sun could have open sourced Java and Mono would have had no traction. Years ago, Sun could have realized that people don't want Swing on their desktops. Years ago Sun could have sponsored alternative languages for the JVM.

It's too late at this point. Open sourcing Java isn't enough to gain traction at this point.

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