Google App Engine Criticized For Partial Java Support

Sun Microsystems’ chief open source officer, Simon Phipps has criticized Google’s recently announced Java support on its App Engine. His comment was in response to Google’s JRE Class White List. A Java App Engine application’s access to the classes in the  Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is limited to the classes listed in this white list

In his blog post Phipps says “Whether you agree with Sun policing it or not, Java compatibility has served us all very well for over a decade. That includes being sure as a developer that all core classes are present on all platforms. Creating sub-sets of the core classes in the Java platform was forbidden for a really good reason, and it’s wanton and irresponsible to casually flaunt the rules.”