Java's obstacles

As someone who just hasn't gotten into Java because it just hasn't made sense for any of my projects so far, this strikes me as a fine analysis of some underlying issues:

Chris Blizzard » the opportunity costs of java's license

...instead of just giving reasons of why they should [open-source Java], let's instead talk about the cost of them not doing it... Those things that are clearly measurable as things that were missed because Java wasn't open source.

...[open source Mono] is shipped by default in just about every major Linux distribution which means "Mono everywhere" is a reality. Java isn't. It will never be the default for desktop apps on Linux, as much as we would love it to be.

...In Red Hat Enterprise Linux we include three different virtual machines. Why? Because they are all incompatible with various applications. Write once, run anywhere? It's a lie, guys. Tests don't hold a candle to a single source base.

...Eclipse. Wait, what you say? Isn't eclipse written in Java? Isn't that a success for Java? Kind of. In some ways Eclipse is even more important than Java. It's a great framework and a great development environment. It makes using Java productive. From what I hear from friends who develop in Eclipse and Visual C++ from Microsoft, Eclipse kicks the crap out of it. We could be kicking ass with it. But it's based on non-free software. Which means it's tainted and the right people won't get behind it. The license holds Eclipse back.

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