Sun melting down, and where's Java?
Submitted by Josh Fruhlinger on Tue, 10/21/2008 - 02:58.
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Oh, hey, have you heard? Sun's financial results for the quarter that just ended, which everyone knew were going to be bad, are now going to be really, really bad. Like losing 12 cents a share when they were only supposed to be losing 1 cent a share bad. Sun is not helped by the fact that many of its best customers for its profitable high-end servers are in the bankrupt Wall Street investment bank sector, though of course Sun's profits weren't exactly going like gangbusters before the meltdown went into full swing.
From my perspective, one of the most interesting things about the coverage of the company's problems is how Java figures into the conversation, which is exactly not at all. In most of the articles, the word only appears as Sun's stock ticker; the closest I could find to a mention is in this AP story, which notes that "Sun's strategy of developing free, 'open-source' software and giving it away to spur sales of its high-end computer servers and support services hasn't paid off as investors would like." Even longtime tech journalist Ashlee Vance, when gamely badgering Jon Schwartz for the New York Time about whether Sun would sell its hardware division and focus on software, only mentions Solaris and MySQL in discussing the latter.
Those in the Java community no doubt believe that Java is too big to fail, that Sun can't abandon it because it's too important, even if it can't tangibly be tied to anything profitable. But if Sun's investors eventually dismember the company to try to extract what value is left in it, I'm not sure where Java will fit into that plan. No doubt somebody would take over at least nominal stewardship, but we all may come to be very thankful that it's been released as open source.
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Will be a disaster if sun falls
as you just mentioned currently Java is too big to fall but I'm not sure what could happen if the recession goes on especially that most of the customers of java technologies are enterprise entities such as banks and financial institutions.
I believe that java to be mainly focusing on enterprise applications is risky.
If Java falls then what will the java developers do?
the problem is that demand on software services is somewhat fragile and depends on the prosperity of the economy as most institutes considers its IT departments as cost centers.
I hope this day never comes but we should be ready for anything.
The Amazing JAVA
This article is insane Java is Free, Open Source
Java is open source and a standard and if SUN right now the leader cant handle it anymore pass the flag to Google, Fujitsu, IBM, Oracle, etc. Anyway SUN doesn't innovate Java since the 90's. JavaFX?, It is a joke everybody knows.
Its like you will tell me that Ruby or Python or PHP will be broken because this financial crisis hahaha that is insane.
Java is Open Source and Free same as Ruby and Python and PHP, Java doesn't depend of a single entity anymore.
"Java is FREE".
Hi alpha512- It's true that
Hi alpha512-
It's true that Java is open source -- which I mention at the end of my post as something Java programmers should be thankful for. But I think you underestimate how disruptive it would be for Java if Sun suddenly went away (the two most likely scenarios for this being that Sun might merge or be bought by another company with different priorities, or its various divisions sold off for whatever cash they can garner).
Linux was a project that started out from the ground up as a grass roots open source project; Java was created as a commercial product and has only in the last few years been released as open source. It's creator (Sun) still provides much of the infrastructure for the community -- not least with large number of paid engineers whose job is to work on the Java language. Java won't go away if Sun goes under, but the Java landscape will suddenly be very, very different, and maybe people in the community ought to think about that.
It is all about Sun, this is why they didn't talk about Java
Well I agree with you that what is happening to Sun is totally bad. But Java is not Sun only related anymore. When you are talking about Java you are talking about a big community of commercial companies, open source communities and individuals. They all work together to make Java better. So if Sun falls, God forbidden, it is like loosing one general in the battle field, it will affect the whole army yes, but that does not mean they will loose the battle. Actually in such circumstances the rest of the living generals and soldiers should fight more for their inventions to keep it alive.
I agree with mnour if sun
I agree with mnour if sun goes down then there are many other companies to keep java alive. All of us can pray for sun to keep going on but if sun really goes down then there will nothing much to worry about. After all java is an open source.
To my mind
The article is cool! But to my mind, to understand everything it is necessary to read several books from the pdf ebooks search engine. Otherwise it is almost impossible to become a professional in some field.
Thanks a lot
I wanted just to tell you that i thank you a lot for this constant share and nice writting and as usual you're giving a proof of a professionalism so thanks again.
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I agree with mnour if sun
I agree with mnour if sun goes down then there are many other companies to keep java alive. All of us can pray for sun to keep going on but if sun really goes down then there will nothing much to worry about. After all java is an open source. - cheap auto insurance quotes
I am sure there are many to
I am sure there are many to lead Java ahead even after sun is not available anymore.
Java is open source and a
Java is open source and a standard and if SUN right now the leader cant handle it anymore pass the flag to Google, Fujitsu, IBM, Oracle, etc. Anyway SUN doesn't innovate Java since the 90's. JavaFX?, It is a joke everybody knows.
Its like you will tell me that Ruby or Python or PHP will be broken because this financial crisis hahaha that is insane.
Java is Open Source and Free same as Ruby and Python and PHP, Java doesn't depend of a single entity anymore.
"Java is FREE".
Well I agree with you that
Well I agree with you that what is happening to Sun is totally bad. But Java is not Sun only related anymore. When you are talking about Java you are talking about a big community of commercial companies, open source communities and individuals. They all work together to make Java better. So if Sun falls, God forbidden, it is like loosing one general in the battle field, it will affect the whole army yes, but that does not mean they will loose the battle. Actually in such circumstances the rest of the living generals and soldiers should fight more for their inventions to keep it alive.
I don't think Sun will go
I don't think Sun will go under, they've been on the brink before and have always bounced back. Something that often goes unmentioned is that sun does A LOT of business with the government and the military industrial complex and they aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Although the banks are on hard times right now, aren't going away either.
Sun has been shrinking for
Sun has been shrinking for longer than I can remember.They're not having a bad year, they're having a bad decade.And despite me using lots of low-end Sun servers all of them run Linux. zfs and DTrace alone can't cut lack of almost 20 k available packages.
Nice share - thanks
gain big thanks for the share i'm always enjoying all your posts - Big ig thanks for this nice work.
Flamingos
Sun still has shitloads of cash on hands, company can almost buy itself on market, while AMD is deep in debts.Making decision on a single quarter losses absolutely makes no sense -- as article says, this loss is due to one-time expenses. on its operating activities, Sun is very close to break-even.
I don't think it will be
I don't think it will be disaster for sun.I am sure they will come back with great spirit.
The problem is they're
The problem is they're getting so distracted with other shit. They buy MySql for a billion, buy StorageTek for another 4 billion, spend money developing crap like Glassfish, sell x86 servers while telling everyone their own architecture is better...its a mess.
Sun's financial results for
Sun's financial results for the quarter that just ended, which everyone knew were going to be bad, are now going to be really, really bad.Is anybody surprised? They open-sourced JDK,Solaris,everything. What did they expect?
Sun still has shitloads of
Sun still has shitloads of cash on hands, company can almost buy itself on market, while AMD is deep in debts.Making decision on a single quarter losses absolutely makes no sense -- as article says, this loss is due to one-time expenses. on its operating activities, Sun is very close to break-even.
Noway its never gonna happen
Noway its never gonna happen though it may tough time for Sun but they will soon come back as they were.
But someone has to take
But someone has to take place of SUN potential then who's it gonna be.
Java is a success because
Java is a success because there are markets that support it, just as C++ is not going away as there are markets in which it thrives. Right tool for right job, but don't assume a language is a failure because it's not used for your job.
Ah, well, in this case, as
Ah, well, in this case, as the JVM for my legacy code is now open sourced, I'd probably look to establish a community effort.
That's exactly it, yes. I
That's exactly it, yes. I mean I mostly program in Java too, but language is ultimately language. It's means to an end, the end being developing software. Or training someone to develop software.
And while I have a grudge against Haskell I can't even put into words, it's just as much or less a programming language (from my "programmer" point of view) as Java is. I need a program A, I got language X, I write A in X. Or if absolutely positively unfeasible, stupid or impossible, I'll opt for changing to language Y inherently suited better for A.
I am sure there are many to
I am sure there are many to lead Java ahead even after sun is not available anymore.
The problem is they're
The problem is they're getting so distracted with other shit. They buy MySql for a billion, buy StorageTek for another 4 billion, spend money developing crap like Glassfish, sell x86 servers while telling everyone their own architecture is better...its a mess.
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