I've been sceptic to the whole open sourcing of Java, from day one. I've been worried about Microsoft and forks. The last few months I've started to feel more comfortable with the whole thing. Perhaps it won't be the end of the world, after all.
Now I think forking Java might be the best thing that could ever happen! Let me explain!
It all started when I saw Gilad Brachas sketch of the new module system for Java. It seems absolutely hideous! Again someone bolting weird new stuff to Java, just to make sure a really small percentage of all Java programmers can fix problems they've obviously managed to live without, while Java has boomed in usage and popularity.
Next horror story is the whole closure enchilada. I'm sure lots of people are wetting their pants thinking about the cool code they'll be able to write with closures. A plain vanilla programmer like me will end up using it once a year, at the most.
The solution is, of course, to let Gilad and Neal Gafter (who should know better from his years in the C++ standardization committee not to bolt too many features to a language (I was there too)) and their friends do their thing in Java NG, and let the rest of us concentrate on using the quite small, simple, useful and amazingly successful language that is called Java. Bolting more stuff on it will break it!