Program Blu-ray features in a free language

While some people say that Blu-ray (and HD-DVD) already are obsolete I still think they will be useful for a good number of years.

One possible killer feature in Blu-ray is the Java ME virtual machine that will be in every Blu-ray player. If a lot of companies and individuals start using this to add interactive and networked features to the disks, I think we will see a lot of cool things happen.

For Java developers this could be really exiting. Anyone seen any Java written for Blu-Ray disks yet?

And the Java platform used is free.

Links:

• http://www.blueboard.com/bluray/bluray_guides.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BD-J

Who would use Mono now?

With Java available as default in every Linux distribution (made possible by the move to GPL) I think Java has a great future on Linux. Better integration into the Gnome and KDE desktops would be nice, but I guess that is just a matter of time now that it’s Open Source.

Contrast this to Mono, the (sort of) free .NET implementation available on Linux and Mac OS X. The deal between Microsoft and Novell was aimed at assuring people that Mono was and will be free, and that Microsoft won’t sue anyone for implementing their patents. But the opposite happened. Everyone started looking really close on the problems with Mono. If you are a Novell employee or non-paid Mono developer you are not going to be sued. But what about another company investing resources in Mono? You can be sued. Is this really in the spirit of Open Source?

You can call it FUD, but for me it’s a question of investing my time and energy in technology that are and will be available on the platforms I use (Mac OS X and Linux). I don’t trust Microsoft and I don’t trust Novell anymore either. Who knows when Microsot will bring out its patents and kill Mono use outside of Novell? I think .NET is good if you want to develop for Windows only. For cross platform development I would not use it - I would go for Java.