Support Your Candidate!
In my fervor and over-statement to make a point I started making shitty analogies to a religious war. I apologize. That was pretty dumb-ass if you think about current events in the real world. Thanks to Patrick for pointing that out to me. I'm going to switch to a Political based analogies instead. Support your candidate - Sun - in it's bid to control the platform on which you work and play.
What I was trying to communicate in my bad analogy is that Java developers need to be hard core in their support of the platform. We need to be more vocal both in our commitment to Java and our opposition to Microsoft and it's monopolistic practices. Fighting FUD with FUD is just fighting Fire with Fire. Java's a better platform, I don't care WHAT Sun promises for tomorrow, Java's a kick-ass tool today. FUD is just for the PHBs and though it sounds horrible, it works which is why Microsoft uses it against every competitor it has. Microsoft is promising the moon, but it never delivers. It's trying to rig the election. You the developer are the voter! Don't fall for it!
Ever read the book "Starup" by Jerry Kaplan? It's a great book about a real startup (before the dotcom nuttiness) call Go trying to create a pen-based computer. Then Microsoft announced it's Pen Windows - which was pure vapor - and killed the market as everyone waited for what Microsoft was going to do. This was all in the early 90s... 10 years later, Microsoft is launching their TabletPC.
DotNot is more of the same from Microsoft. A stalling tactic. Over promising in order to take control. I think Sun needs to make its own promises (hopefully promises it can deliver on, but whatever. It needs ammunition against MS).
It's time to take back the platform. It's your vote. Choose wisely.
-Russ