Re: Java helps prove consumers want technology unbundled

["Eric M. Hopper" <hopper@omnifarious.mn.org>]

On Tue, Dec 14, 1999 at 07:16:18PM -0500, Joe Barr wrote:
> 
> Some platform inconsistencies are due to lack of maturity and
> unintentional errors.  Others, such as those created by Microsoft,
> were done with bad intentions.
> 
> It seems a current theme with Microsoft and their boosters and their
> covert R&D types to blame the victim.  "What we did to so and so
> didn't matter because they had made mistakes anyway."
> 
> This is like a band of muggers bashing a victim's head in with a tire
> tool, strangling them, and then setting the corpse on fire and using
> as a defense the argument that "Well, she was old and would have died
> in a few years anyway."
> 
> The only difference being, of course, that the muggers are a little
> more honest.

	I agree with you about Microsoft.  I think they have done a lot
to try to devalue the Java trademark.

	But...  I think the real error that Sun made here is that, when
it comes down to it, the code IS the spec.

	The IETF recognizes this in their two conforming implementation
policy.  The real documentation of the standard is the code, not the
paper.  The paper is just a guide stating what the code is trying to
accomplish.  All the little myriad details of exactly what happens in
every odd case is documented by the code.

	IMHO, no standard is open until there's a bunch of source code
out in the open for everyone to see that implements it.

Have fun (if at all possible),
-- 
Its name is Public Opinion.  It is held in reverence. It settles everything.
Some think it is the voice of God.  Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet
broke a chain or freed a human soul.     ---Mark Twain
-- Eric Hopper (hopper@omnifarious.mn.org  http://omnifarious.mn.org/~hopper) --