OSGi vs. Sun

Peter Kriens has posted an interesting blog entry that pretty much summarizes the current situation between the OSGI camp (aka JSR-291) and the Sun JSR-277 and JSR-316 camp. I have to say that I pretty much agree that as far as technology goes, I would much prefer that Sun be more open to adopting OSGi as a standard technology for all of the Java runtimes (Java ME, Java SE, and JavaEE). OSGi has proven itself already and has had years to evolve and become what it is while being driven by real world requirements and usage.

I think the big conflict between Sun and OSGi is a very simple political battle over control and licensing. Technology be damned! Once again the politics of Java are eschewing the common sense and logic that would normally prevail among intelligent individuals. I have been very hopeful that Java was making a resurgence in its ability to innovate and evolve, but this is the kind of thing that makes me worry…

To be perfectly fair, I think the resolution to this lies just as much with the OSGi Alliance as it does with Sun. I am not privy to the details of such conflicts, but I am confident that there is a fair amount of ego involved in this issue on both sides and having an external company structured around a “specification” such as OSGi does not lend itself well to being community driven. However, I will continue to use OSGi and recommend it because I feel that it is far superior to any of the “from scratch” specifications being authored in the JCP, and I can only hope that in the long run common sense will prevail in some fashion with both parties involved.