For all the crap Java the language gets, it's led to many mature, excellent projects and libraries (just take a look down the Apache list), it's led to the JVM and Scala, Clojure, etc.
The language itself has shown that it probably isn't going to get past version 7, and even getting that through was by cutting a whole lot of features (lol closures lol?). However, that would just mean Java faded into insignificance when a new leader emerged. I think this may well have fallen to Scala given time. Oracle is unnecessarily hastening Java's demise, and from my limited understanding of the reporting, might be taking the JVM with it. That's a really bad thing for software development in general.
Ha, OK while it is slightly naff to do it I couldn't help but smile and pull this quote out of pg's essay:
11. Its daddy is in a pinch. Sun's business model is being undermined on two
fronts. Cheap Intel processors, of the same type used in desktop machines, are
now more than fast enough for servers. And FreeBSD seems to be at least as good
an OS for servers as Solaris. Sun's advertising implies that you need Sun
servers for industrial strength applications. If this were true, Yahoo would be
first in line to buy Suns; but when I worked there, the servers were all Intel
boxes running FreeBSD. This bodes ill for Sun's future. If Sun runs into
trouble, they could drag Java down with them.
Big companies that can't smell very well and have piles of Cobol-esque Java [The Java Programming Language (tm)] code running on things like AS/400's will probably just pay whatever patenting licensing fees they need to in order to carry on with Java as long as they possibly can.
