[ Thanks to Jason
Greenwood for this link. ]
“Java already has chunks from IBM-sponsored Open Source
projects: the XML libraries from Apache and the Taligent-derived
internationalization technologies developed by Mark Davis’ ICU4J
team. IBM is talking to Sun about some kind of further Open
Sourcing arrangement for Java. Java is openish: it has a community
process to guide the development of new libraries, its source code
is readily available, it puts out betas for advance feedback, and
it has had a bug tracking forum with voting to allow the least
popular bugs to be tracked (and, I suppose, to get addressed
earlier: nice if everyone really has the same bugs.)“Looks good, but there is also a dynamic at play which keeps
some parts of Java in the doldrums, and I don’t see that shifting
Java over to some IBM/Sun-sponsored consortium would necessarily
make much difference. Open Sourcing can only deliver the benefits
of 10,000 eyes when feedback and enhancements can be merged back
into the code base fast. Any organization dealing with code fixing
must prioritize their fixes according to their own lights and
capacity. As Joel on Spolksy creepily puts it Fixing bugs is only
important when the value of having the bug fixed exceeds the cost
of the fixing it…”