“Despite all this success, the promise of Java remains
unfulfilled both on a business and technical level.”
“The dominance that Microsoft has over this industry as a whole
is directly attributable to the control it has over the APIs for
Windows. In fact, Microsoft’s most brilliant business move was that
it was the first company to understand that whoever controls
developers controls the applications and the industry as whole.
What makes Bill Gates the Napoleon of the Computer Age are the
APIs….”
“If we look back to history for guidance, the only way Napoleon
could have been defeated was for England, Russia, Austria, and
Prussia to act in concert to force the issue, a process that took
two decades to complete. Unfortunately, the computer industry’s
equivalent of the grand alliance lacks that same level of
commitment to usurping Microsoft.”
“In fact, many at IBM and Oracle have come to the conclusion
that Sun’s failure to place Java in the public domain means that
Sun’s long-term ambition is to simply replace one tyrant with
another one based in Mountain View, Calif. The radical republican
elements of the industry, otherwise known as the Linux community,
are suspicious of Sun’s real aims as well.“