It's actually difficult to get a fork of java going that people will actually use because of the technology compatibility kit. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Harmony#Difficulties_to_...

"Are you prevented from building your own java with closure support and distributing it?"

I really hate this smug answer. At best it's naive.

Practically speaking I am prevented from doing that. I have two small children and a full time job. This leaves very little time for productive coding. Also, my expertise is not in VM implementation and design. I'm sure I could learn that stuff if I put my mind to it, if only I had a lot of free time which I don't.

Having said that, a real open source project is built around a community. Typically the community wants to have some visibility into the decision making process, and that simply isn't happening with the jvm imo. I don't think it's too much to ask of them to be open about an issue like closures rather than swinging from one side to the other seemingly at the whim of a few people without any explanation.

Given the lack of JSRs filed for Java SE 7, the decision makers appear to be employees of Oracle (previously Sun).

Take closures for example. We were told they weren't going into java 7. Then at that one presentation on fork/join we were suddenly told they were going in. There was never much explanation behind the bipolar decision making.

This is not transparency, it's the whims of a small cabal.