Netbeans v Eclipse... The Reg gets it right

"Sun: We're happy with Eclipse, honest..." the headline on The Register's RSS feed caught my attention this morning. While I have never been intimately involved with either the evolutions of Netbeans or Eclipse it has nevertheless been hard to duck this on-going storm between the two major Java open source IDEs. To that end, The Reg to their wisdom tries to uncover some of the point of views of Mike Milinkovich of Eclipse and Dan Roberts back at Sun. I'll leave it to the article to quote the two points of view directly, however one thing is clear - while the status quo may be satisfactory for Sun it is good to see that Eclipse is acknowledged as the catalyst for changing the dynamics of the Java world. But there in lies the rub: while diversification in the Java ecosystems broadens its appeal, and developer mind share, I think it makes the job harder to reconcile the growing independence of the Java community and how Sun and to some degree the JCP can dictate/define the next horizons for Java platform.