Looking in from the outside as a non-Java programmer:
It has all the downsides of Ruby, Python, etc. in that it needs a runtime installed, maintained, version conflicts, etc., and all the downsides of an AOT-compiled language (Which personally I like - If the runtime is packaged in by default)
@tshrinivasan @prassee I'm agreed but I faced some objections while giving a talk on linux user groups (in Blore)
@prassee Isn't Java proprietary? I think Oracle owns the copyright on the language, so it can't be modified.
(This is from a very non-technical person, btw. Going on context clues from what I know from others.)