Richard P Gabriel's Blog

Reputation and Sun

"How do we know that Sun won't censor or otherwise pollute java.net with heliocentric notions—after all, Sun owns and operates the site?"

My answer last night to this question was that it was the same problem that faced a poet about to sit down and write a poem: How does she know that it will be good? And of course, she doesn't no matter how much training or practice she has had. Sun doesn't know how well it will live up to the Guiding Principles for java.net. Here's why: Sun didn't write them, I did. Executives at a company come and go, and some will buy into the Principles and others won't. Regardless, Sun can't know without the experiment being run.

java.net is a barometer for Sun's courage to bring together a diverse and uncontrolled & uncontrollable mass of people. The executives in place the day I put the Guiding Principles on the table agreed, and now we'll see how well Sun holds up its end of the bargain, and thereby will you know the heart of Sun.

Comments

• It's a two-way street
  i am by no means a poet as the esteemed rpg is, so i'm not going to try to be poetic.

  but we all need to recognize this java.net road we built is not a one-way thing. (yep, we. i worked on thejava.net team for Sun too. Yes, there have been detours and a few roadblocks, and yes, it's not a perfect highway yet.)

  clearly, Sun has a reputation to earn on this type of site. we're working on that (witness, we're live!). but just as importantly, we built this road with the expectation (and promise to sun) that the community will be good citizens too; respectful of each other, agree to disagree, and all that.

  the road's ready for travel, to interesting and cool places. let's merge and take off.

  Posted by: esuter on June 11, 2003 at 01:14 PM

• It's a Good Answer
  As the person who made the point last night (although not nearly so well phrased. Heliocentric... Nice!) I'm really struck by the elegance of Richard's answer. And he's absolutely right. We won't know how this goes for a while, but its definitely worth the attempt.

  Posted by: duncan on June 11, 2003 at 02:36 PM

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