Open-sourcing Java seems to be a recurring theme since Eric S. Raymond, President of the Open-Source Initiative, opened the debate back in February.

Last week, Joshua Marinacci blogged about the benefits and problems of open-sourcing Java and made a rather good analysis of the situation. Also worth reading, James Gosling's blog on the subject.

What comes out, in my opinion, is that there are lots of parameters to take into account and that such a "decision" is not a simple yes-or-no answer. Also, I have no real opinion (yet) as to whether Java should better go open-source or not. All I know is that it is virtually impossible to get all the benefits without accepting some drawbacks: it is all about compromises. This is how (almost) everything works, and Java will be no exception.