Paul Murphy’s one of those tech writers who’s been around the industry forever, and while I don’t always agree with him, I do find a lot of what he says thought-provoking. On Saturday he posted an interesting and kind of grim take on Java’s place in the software ecosystem. If I can sum it up quickly, it goes something like this: Java’s greatest advantage, historically, was that its virtual machine shielded developers from the irritating shifts at the OS level, mostly from Microsoft. The original aim was to realize this advantage on the desktop, in practice that happened almost entirely on the server. Java became so good at that, in fact, that it survived despite being “an almost perfect reflection of the problem it set out to solve in the form of the most absurdly over complicated and generally unmanageable code metastasis outside Microsoft’s own Windows source.”Murphy’s argument is that Oracle’s long-term plans as stated will tend to devalue Java — not because they hold specific malice towards the platform, but because, as they work to standardize and improve the OS/hardware combo they’re acquired, that layer of abstraction becomes less and less necessary. Personally, it’s not that convincing to me — I think Java as an ecosystem (both of programming skills and available code modules) has become to pervasive for there to be some kind of headlong rush back to C even on Oracle’s perfectly tuned appliances — but it’s an interesting look at what exactly Java is good for from someone outside the community.Speaking of provocative things posted on ZDNet, last week also so an interesting piece from Jeremy Allison (of SAMBA fame) on Sun’s (ultimately bad) attitude towards open source. Most of what he discusses is his personal experience with Linux kernel hacking for SPARC, but much of the same vibe might be attached to the company’s schizophrenic, yes-we-will-no-we-won’t-OK-we’ll-do-it-in-this-convoluted-way road to open sourcing Java. Open Source