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The 2003 Java Pro Technology Roundtable
Java industry insiders set a course for tripling the developer base, advancing the standard, and blocking .Net—and that's just for starters
Moderated by Simon Phipps
October 2003 Issue
A day before the curtain rose on this year's JavaOne conference in San Francisco, a panel of Java industry technologists sat down for the third annual Java Pro Technology Roundtable. For the next two and a half hours, they debated the big issues facing the Java community—how to attract more developers to the platform, integration and interoperability, standards and innovation, the importance of open source, and managing the application life cycle.
The panel included six returnees from previous roundtables, including moderator Simon Phipps, Sun's technology evangelist. These veterans—representing BEA, Borland, Oracle, Sonic, and Sybase—were not afraid to speak their minds, sometimes with unpredictable results. Among the newcomers, Sun distinguished fellow Graham Hamilton provided a unique perspective on current and future Java directions. Novell's David Litwack added insights gleaned through the prism of his PowerBuilder and SilverStream experiences. (See the sidebar, "Meet the Panelists.")
One company that was notably absent this year was IBM, which chose not to participate in JavaOne and therefore had no senior Java experts available for the roundtable. IBM's outlook was greatly missed during the discussion. We hope the company will choose to participate in next year's discussion.
This edited text transcript divides the discussion into four sections on the future of development, Java's continuing evolution, the trade-offs of open source, and Java in the real world. In addition, a special online sidebar, "The Roundtable Summations: 11 Views on Java's Biggest Challenges" to this article presents the panelists' choice and analysis of Java's most pressing challenge. These insights serve as a road map to technology directions for the coming year—until the roundtable returns in June 2004. - Dan Ruby
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