How about putting it in the care of an independent foundation like the Python Software Foundation? Until Dart is wrested from corporate control Python will still be the more open language.
How would that make it better? Are software foundations some magical thing that makes all software that comes out of them better? Is this hatred toward large companies?
Direction coming from a company that has a goal for the language can be a good thing. Java was an amazing language for a number of years until Sun decided to let it languish.
Dart is under a very open license that anyone can take any part of the language and use it for their own. The website, spec, vm, analyzer, compiler, and editor are all under open and free licenses. If people get fed up with Google's handling of Dart, they can fork it.
The original claim was that there was no language as open as Dart. I vehemently disagree. Plenty of languages are as open as Dart, and there are several, including Python that are more open. I believe you are underestimating the importance of a language having its own foundation that exists for the sole purpose of ensuring that a language remains vibrant and free. Do you think the PSF would ever make a contributor sign a document before contributing as Google requires for Dart? Also, do you think it's better for a corporation to own the trademark for a programming language's name, or an independent, community run organization? Google owns DART's trademark.
I think Java is a great example of why corporate programming languages are a bad thing. Do you remember the first wave of Java adoption? Do you remember how it was adopted in all sorts of places it had no business being because Sun rammed it down everyone's throats through their sales force? The core of Java and the engineering behind the VM are thanks to Gosling, not Sun.
I'm not criticizing Sun here, either. That's just how it was done back then. Sun was positively benevolent compared to the likes of Cincom.
