The Java Community - its strength is in its disunity
Charles responds (in a comment) to Ted's accusation that .NET's community is better than Java's.
Actually, the strength of the Java community lies in its disunity. Unity is a false strength: it's safety in numbers, but it's also a herd mentality. I suspect the drive for "strength in unity" is a reflection of Microsoft's philosophy of dominance: that the best thing for the world is if everyone just Does Things Our Way: A computer on every desk running Microsoft software. The Java community has competing infrastructure vendors. We have a raft of competing web frameworks, competing AOP frameworks, competing persistence frameworks, competing IDEs, competing heavyweight and lightweight containers. And it's this competition that makes Java such a vibrant community. Nobody's quite satisfied with what the other guy's doing: everyone wants to do better. It's also what makes us, at times, a bunch of bickering children. That does us quite a bit of harm, but I think in the long run things work out for the best.
Well said.