“What does open source have in common with Java?
“Both are former panaceas. Like object oriented programming
in the late 80s, if adopted, they would supposedly lead to magic
synergies known only to the promoters, and breathlessly replayed by
reporters looking for an easy story to repeat over and over and
over.“
“Java was (and is) Pascal reincarnated. A virtual machine that
ran on real machines. Good idea. Been done before. Open source is a
tradition that dates back at least thirty years, if not longer. If
you learned how to program in the 70s your teacher was quite
possibly the source code for Unix (that’s how I learned).”
“Fodder for the hype machine, these “trends” make some people
rich, and take the focus off what’s really happening, which is
still the Web. Then they fade out, to be replaced by the next
vaccuous trend, and in the meantime, most developers work hard,
outside the spotlight, to make their users happy. (That includes
open source developers, btw.)”