This is the 14th JavaOne and—I'd wager—this is also the last JavaOne. That's not the official word. Yet. But the gut feeling here at the show is that, yes, this is the end.

Certainly not the end of the Java language. But it is the end of the conference. Next year, Oracle OpenWorld may just become the largest developer's conference in the world. That's if it isn't already. The crowd gave Scott McNealy a standing ovation as he signed off at the end of the keynote. For the most part, all he had to say were jokes about Larry Ellison's proclivities and how Sun might indulge them.

But McNealy did say that he would miss being the chairman of JavaOne, a sentiment that elicited the standing O. And I will also miss JavaOne if it vanishes. Back in 1999, the conference was festooned with expensive treats for developers and packed with genuine believers. Set-top boxes that ran Java were encased in glass and placed in the halls, while developers played with their new Palm Vs.

This year, there were still true believers. There were young, bright-eyed college freshmen being dragged around by their professors, and enthusiastic Brazilians wandered the halls, identifiable by the fellow with a flag hanging from his neck like a cape.

But the rest of the folks here seem to have a resounding sense of loss. They're still enthusiastic about Java, and they're eager to learn about all the new technology being demonstrated here. But a profound sense of nostalgia pervades the event. A quilt made from old JavaOne t-shirts embodies this feeling. "Oh the times we've had," it seems to say.

It's not all gloom and doom, however. Mark Reinhold showed off a future without classpaths today in the session around Java SE 7. Or rather, around what will eventually be Java SE 7. The goal is to achieve true modularity through a system called Jigsaw, but the actual mechanics of it were still extremely preliminary. There's a long road to that open-source Java.

For now, we must console ourselves with the thought that Larry Ellison seems to want to make Sun into a consumer electronics company.