A lot was going on with Java in the early days. On the one hand, SUN resisted it, back when Java was not open source, then open source but with a heavy hand on it.

On the other RM Stallman also resisted everything Java, because it did not mesh with his vision of the future. (Prop up everything GPL, unless the proprietary solution is already an industry standard.) My favourite example was how GCC was on the cusp of getting a backend which could emit Java byte code. Imagine that!

That could have kickstarted all the JVM languages a decade earlier. Alas, many forces were against such things.

Now, we have everything on everything, but most of all Javascript everywhere. Weird. :-)