[oblio]

That's some solid historical revisionism is action here :-)

That period you mention was definitely due to stagnation, on Sun's part. It wasn't "watch the pioneers as the crash and burn and pick the good parts". It was "we're stuck".

[cashewchoo]

That's probably fair. I was in high school during that period. I've mostly only ever known the Java owned by Oracle, where it seemed... reasonably kept? Java 8 happened under Oracle, after all.