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The Sun creation was attracting millions of programmers eager to use Java to build everything from smart-phone software to high-volume Web sites. "Stewardship of Java is such a profitable business, I feel like a start-up," McNealy gushed.
When another
What's new:
Some say interest in Java is sinking as Sun's fortunes falter--and that making it open source could turn it around.
Bottom line:
Sun is starting to suggest that there may be open source in Java's future, but not in the short run. Still, the issue will be a hot topic at JavaOne this week.
Java, a cross-platform programming language, remains a vital technology to legions of corporate customers and software companies, but the unity of the Java industry itself is being strained, according to industry observers. The past year has seen more explicit conflict among Java vendors, instead of the cohesive front needed to compete effectively against Microsoft. Also, open source and the rise of Web services have drawn developer attention away from Java.
And Sun's declining revenue and shifting product strategies are a distraction to the industry at large, which has looked to the company as the Java standard bearer.
For Sun, which is trying to
"Sun is actually losing control of the Java franchise," said Anne Thomas Manes, an analyst at the Burton Group and former Sun executive. "If Sun were smart, they'd see the writing on the wall--that they can't maintain exclusive control of Java and that open source is taking over."
At the JavaOne conference, Sun will forge ahead with its plans to regain lost ground in the Java software market. Sun will be releasing
Sun contends that the Java industry remains vibrant, and that the company regularly evaluates its relationship with the Java community.
The open-source runaround
One of the most pressing questions facing the Java industry is whether Sun will release Java to the open-source community, potentially ceding some control over Java's evolution. One of the most high-profile events planned for this week is a
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Although Sun President Jonathan Schwartz has indicated that Sun is
"We are moving in that direction, but we have not decided how, when, or if," said John Loiacono, Sun's executive vice president of software. "No matter what we do on the licensing model, compatibility will be key criteria we will have to address. That's what the community is asking for."
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"We are moving (toward open-sourcing Java), but we have not decided how, when, or if."
--John Loiacono,
Sun's executive vice president of software |
The question of making Java open source, which has been
Last November, the leading Java server software vendors, IBM and BEA Systems, chose to bypass the JCP to bring new
Meanwhile, a group called the
Advantage, Microsoft
These disjointed efforts around the advancement of Java underscore how Java vendors are increasingly choosing to go their own way without Sun's direct involvement, said Bill Whyman, an analyst at the Precursor Group. The Java standardization process is democratic, but the lack of a cohesive approach to Java development benefits Microsoft, which is beefing up its .Net line of software to take on the back-end computing jobs dominated by Java.
An open question is how a high-profile
"The Java community is being pushed and pulled in many different directions, and that competitive dynamic is undercutting their ability to provide a common front to Microsoft," Whyman said.
The battle between Java-based software companies and Microsoft is far from over. Studies indicate that developers are split between Microsoft's .Net tools and Java-based products for building applications that conform to Web services, a set of protocols that have gained wide industry backing. Java companies are making steady headway in making
Java has been installed in millions of handheld devices, such as mobile phones, which is a market Microsoft has yet to fully crack.
Sun plays an influential role in the Java industry because it controls the core Java specifications used by other vendors. And Sun provides testing kits to ensure that Java's compatibility so that applications can run on products from different providers.
But in the area of commercial software, Sun finds itself in the role of also-ran, despite having founded the Java industry. In the multibillion-dollar Java server software market, for example, Sun has a single-digit share behind leaders IBM, BEA and Oracle, according to research.
Central to Sun's strategy to gain market share are its new Java Studio Creator tool and a cut-rate, per-user licensing plan for its suite of Java server and desktop products. Sun has signed on
Sun is intent on drawing more financial gain from its ownership of Java, which generates revenue from licensing fees. Java is also one Sun's most valuable brands. The company chose to call its open-source PC software suite Java Desktop System, though it has very little Java in it, notes Rick Ross, a Java programmer and founder of the Java lobby, a Java developer Web site.
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"I keep hearing from customers, 'Whatever you do, I don't want to see Java fragment.'"
--John Loiacono,
head of Sun's software unit |
"At this stage, the executive view of Java within Sun is 'Let's figure out how we can do anything to bring us revenue.' That's not consistent with the position to provide meaningful community support," said Ross, who points out that contributions to Java come from many sources, including open-source developers and big vendors, notably IBM.
Sun has made changes to the Java Community Process to be more inclusive with open-source foundations and to speed up decision-making. Loiacono acknowledged that there have been complaints about Sun's handling of Java, but they've come mainly from competitors.
"Most of the complaints, if not all, have come from competitors who want to own things outright or have things freely available to them," he said. "I keep hearing from customers, 'Whatever you do, I don't want to see Java fragment.'"
Critics have complained that Sun hasn't done enough to accommodate and harness the collective energy of the open-source developer community.
In February, Michael Tiemann, the chief technology officer of Linux distributor Red Hat, called for greater collaboration between Linux developers and the Java industry. He said that the "open-source community has felt rejected by Java" and that the Java community is closed, going so far as to call it a "Java apartheid."
Bob Sutor, IBM's director of WebSphere infrastructure, said that Java should be a more popular development language to build Linux applications than it is right because the open source and Java communities have a common enemy: Microsoft.
"In terms of Java being used as a general programming language on Linux to do lots of different things all over the place, compared to C++, it just hasn't gotten there yet," Sutor said. He argued that an open-source implementation of Java that could be shipped with Linux distributions would make Java more popular in the open-source developer community.
On a technical level, some software executives contend that Java is not seeing the same amount of engineering investment that it did in the early days of its development. Instead of spending all their energy on building out the software "plumbing" Java provides for business applications, software companies are shifting their focus to features that demonstrate more business value.
"The reality is that Java is a foundation technology. Beyond that, we need to get technology around Java, such as management and Web services," BEA CEO Alfred Chuang
Still hot?
Sun's Loiacono dismisses the notion that Java is waning in importance. He notes that 12,000 to 15,000 programmers are planning to attend JavaOne next week and that there is a great deal of innovation around Java-specific technologies.
"If Java were a long-in-the-tooth technology, you'd see attendance dropping dramatically," Loiacono said. But JavaOne attendance is increasing, he said. "I don't think we've hit anywhere near the mainstream of where Java is going to be."
Still, developers--which Sun calls the "lifeblood of the company"--need assurances that the company will give them a way forward to the latest technologies, noted John Rymer, an analyst at Forrester Research. In particular, many developers are wrestling with new programming methods that use Web services to automate business processes, he said.
While Microsoft is well along to adopting Web services throughout its product line, Java-based products that incorporate Web services, based on Java 2 Enterprise Edition 1.4 standard, are relatively recent.
"The community is changing. (Java developers) are moving on, mainly to XML and Web services," Rymer said. "If Sun doesn't move with them, then Java is going to be an interesting part of the infrastructure, but not front and center."
CNET News.com's Stephen Shankland contributed to this report.
Eventually the honeymoon is over and then you get the nay
sayers who because there is nothing really exciting to write
about start engaging in nit picking. Many of the quotes in the
article are out of context, even when they do refer to news.com's
own stories.
The best bit is from Forester's Rymer. Apparantly the world is
waitng for XML and Webservices from Java. I have thousands of
e-pages of xml this and xml that specifications to prove that
between IBM, SUN, Oracle and BEA (among others) Java has a
XML/WS implementation that is second to none. Whether you are
looking for Restful Webservices (www.1060.org), XML RPC
(www.xmlrpc.com) or SOAP (j2ee 1.4), Java has them all and
more, Beep anybody or Grid Services?
I work for one of the largest banks in the world here in the
Netherlands. For the last 4 years Java has been the strategic
applications platform at our bank. Its all Java over here, tied
togather with Messaging (JMS/Websphere MQ). Sure there is a lot
of XML but they are either used on the client tier (XHTML) or as a
propietary message format to integrate data. Here you will also
find a lot of Swing guis doing a lot of heavy lifting on the
desktop and the other thing that never seemed to be noticed
is the popularity of JRMP/RMI protocols to integrate back end
services with the "rich" desktop clients.
I also know for a fact that all our competitors are also using the
J2EE stack to solve problems. There have been exactly two
occasions where SOAP/WSDL was looked into. Once our architect
realized that the problem are essentially confined to the
intranet, they wonder why they needed the abstractions of
structured platform neutral strings to integrate.
You will find a simillar picture in the finacial industry in
Germany, France and England.
So please, when you do a so called pragmatic "state of play" with
respect to Java, try posing the question "what next for Java?"
since XML/Web Services is so old economy.
Suhail
Eventually the honeymoon is over and then you get the nay
sayers who because there is nothing really exciting to write
about start engaging in nit picking. Many of the quotes in the
article are out of context, even when they do refer to news.com's
own stories.
The best bit is from Forester's Rymer. Apparantly the world is
waitng for XML and Webservices from Java. I have thousands of
e-pages of xml this and xml that specifications to prove that
between IBM, SUN, Oracle and BEA (among others) Java has a
XML/WS implementation that is second to none. Whether you are
looking for Restful Webservices (www.1060.org), XML RPC
(www.xmlrpc.com) or SOAP (j2ee 1.4), Java has them all and
more, Beep anybody or Grid Services?
I work for one of the largest banks in the world here in the
Netherlands. For the last 4 years Java has been the strategic
applications platform at our bank. Its all Java over here, tied
togather with Messaging (JMS/Websphere MQ). Sure there is a lot
of XML but they are either used on the client tier (XHTML) or as a
propietary message format to integrate data. Here you will also
find a lot of Swing guis doing a lot of heavy lifting on the
desktop and the other thing that never seemed to be noticed
is the popularity of JRMP/RMI protocols to integrate back end
services with the "rich" desktop clients.
I also know for a fact that all our competitors are also using the
J2EE stack to solve problems. There have been exactly two
occasions where SOAP/WSDL was looked into. Once our architect
realized that the problem are essentially confined to the
intranet, they wonder why they needed the abstractions of
structured platform neutral strings to integrate.
You will find a simillar picture in the finacial industry in
Germany, France and England.
So please, when you do a so called pragmatic "state of play" with
respect to Java, try posing the question "what next for Java?"
since XML/Web Services is so old economy.
Suhail
If nothing else, this article is more about Sun's possible problems, than about Java itself. It's quite healthy as MS Visual Studio apps are being ported over right and left.
If nothing else, this article is more about Sun's possible problems, than about Java itself. It's quite healthy as MS Visual Studio apps are being ported over right and left.
My theory (we?re all entitled to one) is that Java suffers from the same problems as COBOL, without sharing all of COBOL?s benefits. Java is basically aimed at the entry-level (i.e. ?cheap labor?) market -- which isn?t to say that there aren?t some superb programmers who use both languages. But to meet the needs of that market it?s been unavoidable that it is a highly constrained resource hog. If you try and extend its functionality, you end up with the neither-fish-nor-fowl-nor-good-red-flesh mess that killed COBOL or PL/I or ADA or any other of those antique languages.
Unlike COBOL, there is no consistency across platforms and possession of the skill offers no security for the future. Not too many people believe that there will be much Java around a decade from now, let alone three or four decades. James Gosling is on record as saying he expects Java to be overtaken before very long by higher-level languages, which require even fewer (!) human skills. I believe he?s on record as having said that he?s surprised that Java has lasted this long. It?s certainly not a skill -- I use the word loosely -- that any young and aspiring Western professional would waste their time on.
It may be true that the next generation of languages being worked on by scientists such as Charles Simonyi will take even longer than we currently expect to become commercial. Most of us are dismayed that progress has been as slow as it has. Still, what bright student would bet their earning potential that Simonyi et al won?t finally make a breakthrough? In the meantime, we?re stuck with decreasing ability levels among new Java programmers, which is a Catch-22 situation?
- Cool to cold
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by furl12
July 5, 2004 10:40 AM PDT
- I?ve been noticing the same trend as the author of the article. We always expect a little drop-off after a new, new thing ages, but this is more than that.
-
Reply to this comment
-
(8 Comments)My theory (we?re all entitled to one) is that Java suffers from the same problems as COBOL, without sharing all of COBOL?s benefits. Java is basically aimed at the entry-level (i.e. ?cheap labor?) market -- which isn?t to say that there aren?t some superb programmers who use both languages. But to meet the needs of that market it?s been unavoidable that it is a highly constrained resource hog. If you try and extend its functionality, you end up with the neither-fish-nor-fowl-nor-good-red-flesh mess that killed COBOL or PL/I or ADA or any other of those antique languages.
Unlike COBOL, there is no consistency across platforms and possession of the skill offers no security for the future. Not too many people believe that there will be much Java around a decade from now, let alone three or four decades. James Gosling is on record as saying he expects Java to be overtaken before very long by higher-level languages, which require even fewer (!) human skills. I believe he?s on record as having said that he?s surprised that Java has lasted this long. It?s certainly not a skill -- I use the word loosely -- that any young and aspiring Western professional would waste their time on.
It may be true that the next generation of languages being worked on by scientists such as Charles Simonyi will take even longer than we currently expect to become commercial. Most of us are dismayed that progress has been as slow as it has. Still, what bright student would bet their earning potential that Simonyi et al won?t finally make a breakthrough? In the meantime, we?re stuck with decreasing ability levels among new Java programmers, which is a Catch-22 situation?