During a private conversation, Ben points me to this 13-years-old blog post by Dave Winer titled “Platform is Chinese household” about the nature of development platforms. Let me quote the main point here:

A platform is a Chinese household. One rich husband. Lots of wives. If the husband abuses one wife, it hurts all the wives. All of sudden food starts getting cold. The bed is empty. All of a sudden husband isn’t so rich.

This morning, after months of private and silent discussions, the Apache Software Foundation released an open letter to Sun. See news coverage here and here. [Full Disclosure: I helped directly with the FAQ and I'm one of the original proponents of the Harmony Project and current member of the Harmony PMC]

Sun is the rich husband, the ASF is one of his wives. The JCP (Java Community Process) is the household.

Sam says more about what’s at stake.

Another quote (reprinted from a private email with permission) draws the picture brilliantly:

It’s one thing to be the elephant in the room. It’s another thing to have all the mice realize that you plan to sit on them.

Now my hope is that those other mice realize this sooner rather than later.