Many developers have shunned Mono and now Java is suffering similar concerns. Dalvik is improving but is not commonly available as a standalone package independent from Android and without bare metal optimizations.
There's a huge opportunity for a widely-ported VM that implements a de facto standard open bytecode (e.g. Dalvik's), builds on performance experience from JVM's, is Apache licensed (for community trust), and can be used for running other languages such as Scala and JRuby. An Apache-defined subset of Java class libraries, or even an Apache-specified set with a test kit, would be enough to do that - the VM would not need all the class libraries to be useful. In the Linux world it might become popular on the desktop where Java never did - Vala has brought gtk programming up-to-date, but Harmony could succeed with qt etc. too. An Apache-licensed modular universal VM with popular languages and enough of a well-defined class library to base them on would be a huge force - even better if it were OSGi-based. Could this be done and would it attract developers? Why try to make Harmony 'Java' at all? Forget the attic!
