On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 5:52 PM, Ross Walker <rswwalker at gmail.com> wrote: > On Jan 12, 2012, at 11:30 AM, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote: > >> You can never count on free future support or additions to anything >> and java isn't an exception, but how can anything that works now on >> current openjdk (which includes most open source java apps and >> libraries) be locked in? > > Ok, I may be defending what is ultimately a losing argument here (there must be a word for that), but bear with me while I try and define my point better. > > What I am trying to say is that developing on ANY platform, hardware specific OR software specific is by definition locking one's self into that platform. If that software platform isn't available on all hardware your locked out of that hardware. Oh, the horror of being restricted to windows, unix, linux, and mac platforms and a bunch of phones... Or having to recompile to run on android. Seriously, you may not want to do your own programming in it but there is a ton of free stuff available and now that CentOS finally inherits a working jvm from upstream there's no reason to avoid using it. > For example Flash was thought of as a universal media platform, but then along came Apple with it's iPhone and all of a sudden those media applications weren't so universal. Nobody is forced to buy an iphone. Oracle vs. Google may play out in interesting ways though. Sort of reminiscent of lawsuits against Linux based on earlier proprietary work. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com