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Sun's chief open source officer was one of three keynote speakers at the recent Australian national Linux conference.
He spoke to iTWire soon after he had given his keynote. Edited extracts:
iTWire: Do you think that Sun made a small mistake in delaying the open sourcing of Java?
Simon Phipps: I would have personally preferred to see it happen sooner. But there were really good reasons why it took as long as it did. And where we're at now, I think I'm very pleased with the results we've had. Java is available now in all the main Linux distributions. It's available in a ready-to-use format that works with the package management system on those platforms - so it's there in Synaptic on Ubuntu. It's... integrated into Fedora. So despite probably a year or so delay, I think we've actually reached a really good place with it.
iTWire: Do you think it has cost you anything in terms of adoption vis-a-vis .NET?
SP: Not really because .NET isn't really an aspect of the Linux platform despite the very best efforts of people to get it there.
iTWire: No, I'm asking about the broader community.
SP: No, I don't think that Java and open source is relevant to the space where it's competing with .NET.
CONTINUED
