For those in the Java industry, there are countless ways of exploring the ecosystem that nourishes developers to build the platforms and applications that counter the immense weight of Microsoft and other pseudo-proprietary solutions, and though some (not me) fret about the counter-weight of Google’s influence on the community, Google Code (GC) is the best site for learning about next-gen products and tools for extending the immense success of Enterprise Java…. It all starts with open source and open participation in ideas that rely on individual contributions to a started project, which means that anyone can search the GC database, and find a wealth of solutions that may not be ready for mainstream, but are well on their way to being included in the discussion of whether Java vendors need to add additional functionality to their products based on the support a project receives on GC, along with its corresponding usefulness in real-world implementations…. i have only begun to survey the cusp of what is available, as Google started GC some time back to support their programmatic contribution to Java in the form of Guice….but from what i can see and what i have learned in the time that i have been using GC, it seems a natural location for project owners that are looking to build mind-share around an idea and gather the necessary support to turn a project in to a product…. some time back, i initiated a project around an idea i call ‘astro cloud’ which is basically laid out in a previous post on this blog, in the form of a brainstorming session with myself, of how existing enterprise applications could be extended to bring in the value of the cloud computing phenomenon…some, like Ellison, dont like clouds as a distinct product category, but it seems to me that the sheer weight of what Amazon EC2 and Google are doing, along with countless well-funded start-ups in the Valley and beyond, plus the economics of deploying apps to a distributed platform, here-fore known as the cloud, will make application development and deployment more efficient and simply better by getting them on platforms that scale without limit… GC is a natural place for me to start such an idea as it costs nothing, and takes advantage of the version control and distribution capabilities of Google’s developer offerings, and though i dont know the first thing about developing in Java, despite having been a product marketing manager on Sun’s application server for four important years of its existence, i know there are literally thousands of Java developers using GC to do more in their spare time outside or perhaps even inside the office, to build extensions or occasional stand-alone functionality that is not in the R&D budgets of the major Java vendors…. it doesnt mean you have to turn-over intellectual property rights to Google, as far as i can tell, and it allows me to keep all of my established Google data in place, while building something that could become a Java business….i will not succeed or even start without the support of developers who share the same belief in open source development, or share the same strategic conclusions of what is needed to push enterprise java forward beyond what the application server vendor and customers do….because as we know there is a limit to what Oracle, Glassfish, JBoss, JoNas, WebSphere, Apache, and even SpringSource can do in house…. It seems to me that Google is building platforms with consumer-facing applications, and allowing their enterprise efforts to revolve around developer tools that help push AdWords as embedded functionality, and so it may be that the great Mt. View power comes in to the space of cloud apps for the enterprise in-time, i am betting that they will limit their exposure to cannibalizing what is being built on GC by individual and team development efforts, so they dont run in to a Great Plains-like scenario where all new development stops because the keeper of the platform owns the apps, as well…. In a former lifetime, as an employee of Sun, I pushed the concept of portable EJB components, that never materialized, to my surprise, but it basically was a mistake by most in the Java industry, as the whole cross-platform promise was premised on the supposed capability to plug one EJB in to any platform, and now that that vision is getting increasing viability with the JEE6 release, as component development matures, and as application spending continues to grow vis-a-vis spending on platforms, that are being dramatically reduced in cost thanks to the open source efforts of JBoss and Glassfish, it seems time for developers to begin to use their hard-won talents and market advantages to building stand-alone apps that can be portable across any Java platform…. GC is a place that i will continue to monitor for new projects that may share my belief in betting on apps or even components that can add functionality to an enterprise’s IT environment, without major re-work on extensibility or integration…at the moment i am following JoNas, Multi-Verse, and some other cloud tools that seem to be good starts to the initiative to extending Java beyond the borders of the app servers, and give developers an opportunity to do something on their own, that may in fact turn in to a career, or even a company….nothing seems to be able to match the scale of Google, and combining the usability of GC with a Java application idea, could push the marketability of open source efforts at competing with existing solutions…. i am sure many of you in the Java marketplace have inspected GC at a cursory level, so i am treading on well-known territory for a lot of the Java development community, but it goes to say that by mixing and matching initiatives and functionality in a community environment, such as that found on GC, will provide the necessary foundation to move beyond merely iterative releases of platforms, and focus the corporate Java spend on apps, which is what was promised by Enterprise Java at its inception….SpringSource was right, too much focus on just the platforms, and its time to turn control over to the developers in businesses and individuals developing on their own for real innovation to happen….i think Google Code is one of the leading contenders to lead this evolution….. 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