SUBSCRIBE

Java founder James Gosling quits Oracle

James Gosling, the creator of the Java programming language, has resigned from Oracle, he announced in a blog entry on Friday

ย 

Gosling resigned on April 2 and has not yet taken a job elsewhere, he reported.

ย 

โ€œAs to why I left, itโ€™s difficult to answer: just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good,โ€ he wrote.

ย 

Gosling was the chief technology officer for Oracleโ€™s client software group and, before that, the chief technology officer of Sunโ€™s developer products group.

ย 

In 1991, he led a small group of engineers in a project, then called Oak, to build an object-oriented programming language that would run on a virtual machine, which would allow programs to run on multiple platforms, such as television set-top boxes. This work evolved into Java, which took off in conjunction with the growing use of the Internet, thanks in part to its inclusion into the Netscape browser.

ย 

Gosling follows a number of other noted ex-Sun employees out the door since Oracleโ€™s purchase of the company was finalized in January, including CEO Jonathan Schwartz, and XML co-inventor Tim Bray.

ย 

Less than a month ago, Gosling had stressed the importance of Java to Oracle. โ€œOracle has certainly been incredibly committed to keeping Java and the whole ecosystem as strong and as healthy as can be,โ€ he said, during a talk at a Java symposium in Las Vegas.

ย 

But around the same time he also expressed dismay over the growing politicization of the Java Community Process.

ย 

Fellow ex-Sun alumni Bray tweeted that he was โ€œastounded that Gosling held on so long.โ€

Tech Jobs

Categories