Vendor lock-in is either a key technology problem or an overhyped marketing missile depending on the point of view. I think there's a definition problem at the heart of the agita over in the issue. John Dewey remarked, "A problem well put is half-solved," so I aim to reframe the question while trying to avoid bikeshedding. The heart of vendor lock-in is the obscene nature of the problem, by which I mean "I know it when I see it" a la Potter Stewart's famous opinion on obscenity laws. You can almost hear the start of a Jeff Foxworthy routine...

Despite the gnashing of teeth in 2009 when Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, Sun's stewardship of Java seems to have passed, with very little turbulence, into capable hands. The language continues to evolve to address the productivity needs and desires of end users and mesh with the new computing models driven by the growth in web applications, mobile devices, and advances in hardware design and enterprise architectures.