Re: Gorby
I find it quite cute and feel flattered about Mr. Sikka picking up my own comparison of Sun's "Mr. Java" Jeet Kaul with Gorbachev on Facebook this April (just days after at least one takeover bid for Sun was made public, probably still by IBM?;-)
Those who don't know why, please just check Jeet's Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/meetjeet
History has told us not everything went as Gorbachev had wished it for Russia after the wall and iron curtain fell. So while at first sight the comparison is about as good or reasonable as Rod Johnson once calling the JCP "Communist Commissars" fuelled by similar ideas, we all know Rod and the once "Cool, Green Rebel" crew at SpringSource have recently joined "A Dark" or at least far more mainstream "Force", too ;-)
SAP may not be so afraid of Sun nor have they contributed anything significant in the JCP in the last couple of years. I am there since at least 2005 and a year now as only Individual Executive Committee Member outside the United States (thus one of the few in the JCP who can honestly say "Wir sind das Volk!!" and the only one in Europe in both JCP sections ;-)
They show some activity in the Eclipse Foundation which is also slightly more obscure lead and heavily backed by IBM.
What SAP really seems to be afraid of is Oracle succeeding also in a SOHO or Small Customer market they failed for decades to deliver and gain market share. Using Open Source technologies like MySQL, OpenOffice, Solaris and of course Java. Something other big names in Cloud Computing like Google also do (at least with Java or MySQL) or RedHat. Those also competitors of Oracle and IBM in some areas have however succeeded to be a driving "Force" behind standards like Java EE 6 and its many contents or Java Dependency Injection (JSR-330) with both SAP and VMWare/SpringSource only as passive bystanders.
I just as well as other JCP members know, there are still issues to be solved. And maybe a Foundation like structure similar to Eclipse or Apache could also serve this purpose. However those who only shout and swear occasionally but don't really try to TEAR walls down and move things in their ecosystem won't bring the community anywhere. Not themselves, just look at the recent stock market predictions for SAP ;-)
Werner Keil
Executive Committee Member (SE/EE)
Java Community Process
Biting the hand that feeds IT
