Smart Partner: Java Developers Hammer Sun On Reliability

“Java developers told a panel of Sun executives Monday night
that Sun should spend less time adding new features to Java and
more time making Java reliable across all its major platforms. In a
free-wheeling question-and-answer session with some of Sun’s top
software executives, developers said Sun needs to do a better job
fixing bugs and should make updated source code available
regardless of whether Sun decides to make Java open source.”

“I’ve been developing seriously in Java for four years and I
don’t see real reliability, which to me is the most important thing
for really robust B-to-B e-commerce,” said one developer.
Added another: “The source code Sun makes available under Community
Source is old, and therefore useless. I want to check against what
the engineers did yesterday and find bugs before I release my
software. That’s what we get with Apache and Linux, and I think
it’s a big difference.”

“Developers applauded when Green promised that Sun will “stop
the torture” and deliver simultaneous releases of Java on Solaris,
Linux, and Windows going forward. But executives stopped short of
promising open source Java, saying the Java application base is not
large enough and that open source code is hard to test.”

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