Remembering the Future

I read a lot of Java related blogs and a lot of MS related blogs, but very few of the Java blogs are by Sun folks. So I followed Simon's link to Sun bloggers, eager to stock up on the good content that I've been missing out on. When I got there, I discovered that the list isn't very long, although it includes lots of Sun luminaries, and that about half of the blogs haven't been updated in 2004. Color me disappointed. It's hard to claim quality when quantity is AWOL. . .

Even after thinking about it, I still feel that the .NET blogging community is a smaller appendage to the larger MS blogging community, while the Java blogging community is a big place that the small Sun blogging community is trying to break into. What I mean is this: If I'm looking for thought leadership from the community, in the Java community, I'm looking towards the non Sun bloggers -- these are the folks doing AOP, Groovy, SGen, Prevalence, WebWork, etc. This shows the rich ecosystem that has grown up around Java. If I look at the .NET community, I pretty much look for the MS bloggers. There are some leaders outside of MS, but pretty much the thought leadership resides with folks inside the "big house". From where I sit, this is an accurate characterization of the .NET and Java ecosystems. In the end, the two companies have to decide not only that they want to foster communities, but what kind of community they want.

Let's not confuse cause and effect here. There used to be plenty of .Net bloggers who didn't work for Microsoft. I still haven't forgiven Microsoft for what they did to Peter Drayton.