It has nothing to do with being evil. Microsoft is a business, and they have made a huge investment in a game that has to pay off for them and their shareholders. That means they need to turn Minecraft into a cash cow, and that means getting people to pay for everything... eventually.
Java Edition is no longer "Minecraft" as per the announcement.
There is a common perception, "Microsoft is a business, all businesses are evil because they want to make money, therefore anything Microsoft does is tainted by the evil of wanting to make money." I won't pretend Microsoft isn't evil, has not been, and does not continue to engage in practices that are evil by my values for "evil". But "[Microsoft] need[s] to turn Minecraft into a cash cow" is pejorative (expressing contempt or disapproval). In effect, you are saying, "This has nothing to do with Microsoft being evil, but they are going to do evil things with Minecraft because they need to put the screws to the game and get people to cough up the phat lewt."
Uhm... ok. So long as we are clear on where you stand. "Java Edition is no longer "Minecraft" as per the announcement."
More of the same. It is "Minecraft: Java Edition." "Java Edition is no longer Minecraft" implies the game is no longer "Minecraft" at all, when it is. "I'm not saying it was aliens, but... Aliens!"
I stand by my statement that Minecraft Java Edition has WAY too much "baggage" because of the nature of Java and the comparative ease of decompiling compared to C++, because of the existing community and "ecosystem", because of things like Forge, LiteLoader, and Optifine (due to the nature of Java), and because of the existing set of "bugs that became features" that are not present in the Bedrock edition because "let's not build bugs into the bedrock code if we can avoid it when we can make proper features instead." Of course, long-term financial issues are a part of this, but the talk of Microsoft soaking money out of users with Better Together does nothing to give an honest look at the problems Minecraft: Java Edition has in its current state that make crossplay all but impossible; certainly not now, likely not ever.
This plugin could bring crossplay support to Java Edition and Java Edition servers so they can also support the other games: http://protocolsupport.true-games.org/
It has demonstrated PE support on Java servers before so I'm sure its possible
There is a common perception, "Microsoft is a business, all businesses are evil because they want to make money, therefore anything Microsoft does is tainted by the evil of wanting to make money." I won't pretend Microsoft isn't evil, has not been, and does not continue to engage in practices that are evil by my values for "evil". But "[Microsoft] need[s] to turn Minecraft into a cash cow" is pejorative (expressing contempt or disapproval). In effect, you are saying, "This has nothing to do with Microsoft being evil, but they are going to do evil things with Minecraft because they need to put the screws to the game and get people to cough up the phat lewt."
Uhm... ok. So long as we are clear on where you stand. "Java Edition is no longer "Minecraft" as per the announcement."
More of the same. It is "Minecraft: Java Edition." "Java Edition is no longer Minecraft" implies the game is no longer "Minecraft" at all, when it is. "I'm not saying it was aliens, but... Aliens!"
I stand by my statement that Minecraft Java Edition has WAY too much "baggage" because of the nature of Java and the comparative ease of decompiling compared to C++, because of the existing community and "ecosystem", because of things like Forge, LiteLoader, and Optifine (due to the nature of Java), and because of the existing set of "bugs that became features" that are not present in the Bedrock edition because "let's not build bugs into the bedrock code if we can avoid it when we can make proper features instead." Of course, long-term financial issues are a part of this, but the talk of Microsoft soaking money out of users with Better Together does nothing to give an honest look at the problems Minecraft: Java Edition has in its current state that make crossplay all but impossible; certainly not now, likely not ever.
It's just another step for Microsoft to "popularize" their Marketplace
This plugin could bring crossplay support to Java Edition and Java Edition servers so they can also support the other games: http://protocolsupport.true-games.org/
It has demonstrated PE support on Java servers before so I'm sure its possible
Best of all, its open source so anyone can help!