JavaOne A petition calling for Sun to put Java on a diet has struck a chord with developers.

Java is several things, one of which is – or ought to be – a lean and mean run-time. But with the latest Java 1.4 Virtual Machine checking in at 40Mb, says developer Chris Kelly, who has called for Sun to hand over development of new APIs – the principal cause of the bloatware - to third parties. (Actually the VM is smaller than that).

"From a small, clean solution to '"write once, run anywhere', Java has become a bloated monster that risks to collapse under it's own weight," says Sven Rosiers, adding his name to the petition (http://www.petitiononline.com/javadiet/).

"The JDK can be large, but there should be an incrementally downloading JRE with small initial footprint to support consumers with low-speed connections. We need this to be able to effectively support Java in the browser," notes Bill Lipa.

"For J2SE, Sun should follow an approach not unlike J2ME: a small, clean core set of API's, extended on an as-needed basis with _optional_ "standard extensions".

Kelly himself is a developer of third party extensions himself, in the form of JConfig, so you could say he isn't exactly a disinterested party. But judging by the comments of fellow developers, he isn't alone.

Related Link

Put Java On A Diet – Petition (http://www.petitiononline.com/javadiet/)