RE: Sun begins to fund JVM scripting languages

There are many viewpoints on this news:

1.  It is a snub to Groovy and BeanShell -- Sun are making it clear that
Java and JRuby are the languages of choice.

2.  It is a vote of confidence in Groovy and BeanShell -- Sun, in their
attempt to ensure that the JVM is the only processor in the universe
feel that Groovy and BeanShell are doing fine and that others need
support.

3.  It is an attempt to stop Ruby and especially Ruby on Rails gaining
any traction and hitting Sun's Java EE licence revenue -- by making the
whole Ruby community forget about a Ruby virtual machine and stay with
interpretation and JVM hosting, Sun revenues will remain high.

4.  The JRuby guys managed to con Sun into funding their salaries for a
while so they can avoid `real work' -- good on them I wish I could do
something like that.

5.  The Groovy team has failed to get an advocate within the Sun
hierarchy and so has simply lost out because it has focused on technical
issue at the expense of political issues -- and documentation :-)

. . .

There are many more possible interpretations.  For those interested read
`The Prince' by Niccolo Machiavelli -- a most misunderstood and
misrepresented author.
--
Russel.
====================================================
Dr Russel Winder                +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Road              +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK             russel@...