The Agenda Setters: Java's creator hits back at critics

James Gosling, the man credited with inventing Java, has hit back at critics who claim that Sun is stifling its development.

In an exclusive video interview with silicon.com, Gosling denied that Sun, which owns the rights to Java, is acting in its own commercial self-interest, and was consequently damaging its future. He said: "Sun isn't holding back the development of the language. People who harp on about Sun as a steward of Java are usually people who want to control it themselves." Gosling - now a fellow at Sun Microsystems - is one of the most important figures in the world of programming. He has seen the platform-independent language become a key part of mainstream computing over the last five years. He said: "In the mid-90s, it was all hope and promise, but today people are using Java every day for the most amazing things." He claimed the initial impetus for writing the language was to move computers out of the server room and into the real world. Although Gosling now says that we now see websites with "big buckets of Java code", early prototyping was concentrated on small hardware devices. Developers also focused on the critical importance of the network and on evolving technologies such as video streaming. He said: "Not so long ago, desktops were the focus of the network. At the moment it's phones and soon it will be fridges and light bulbs."