Is anyone still dreaming of Jini?

As the long-promised trend of wired household appliances appears closer to reality, we're reminded of a technology that was once touted as the ultimate driver behind this concept: Sun's Jini.

But at the company's annual JavaOne conference this week, Jini was hardly the subject of many headlines as most interest focused on such topics as open-sourcing Java. Jini, too, has been the subject of open-source efforts in recent months, but that wasn't Sun's original intent for the technology.

After riding the "Internet toaster" wave in the late 1990s, Jini was then touted as a potential leader in Web services, another source of much industry hype. Now Sun has cast Jini into the open-source realm, which won't prove to be a slam-dunk success because of other potential problems with this direction.

Blog community response:

"Jini is cool if you take the time to scour the web to find out what Jini actually does. Adoption of Jini will be slow unless Jini,org can provide all of this information in a single source."
--DamnHandy

"One of the perceptions that Sun hopes to change with this move is of Jini as a Sun product. Apache is a trusted open source brand in the Java community, and it is hoped that if Jini becomes an Apache project, the Java community will be more inclined to see Jini as a true open source project."
--artima developer

"One of the items mentioned was the possible incubation of Jini/JavaSpaces as an Apache project. In my humble opinion, I see this as a great move for Jini technology. Jini has lived in a world where many were not sure about the licensing and Sun's support of the product in marketing and financial terms."
--Wholesale Distributed Transactions