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Java undergoes purification ritual at Internet World

How Sun plans to guarantee Java's ubiquity through a branding initiative, plus highlights of the show's product announcements

By Kieron Murphy, JavaWorld.com, 01/01/97

New York -- In conjunction with Apple Computer, IBM Corp., Netscape Communications Corp., and Oracle Corp., along with the explicit backing of over 100 independent software development firms, Sun Microsystems yesterday unveiled its new "100% Pure Java" program. The announcement, held on the first day of Mecklermedia's busy Fall Internet World show, came in a caffeine burst of corporate partnering apparently brought on by recent moves from Microsoft Corp. to undermine the integrity of Sun's heretofore open Java development specifications.

Spokespersons for the major participants admitted that the agreement to support the new branding initiative was finalized only in the last few days. The 100% Pure Java program consists of three major thrusts: a certification suite to evaluate the compliance of new software to the authentic Java standard; a global educational campaign to inform developers of the benefits of Java technology; and a marketing effort, already underway at IBM, to promote Java worldwide.

The 100% Pure Java announcement comes just weeks after Microsoft announced plans at Fall Comdex, according to "PC Week," to release a Windows native-code compiler for Java and to rebrand the Win32 Java Virtual Machine as the Microsoft Virtual Machine. The reported move by Microsoft would potentially open the door for competing specifications for Java. Since the Comdex announcement, both Sun and Microsoft have been circumspect in their statements regarding the relationship of their one-year-old licensing agreement for Java. In an unsual move, JavaSoft president Alan Baratz and Microsoft senior vice president Brad Silverberg co-authored an open letter to "PC Week" stating that: "Microsoft is committed to full compatibility with the Java programming language and virtual machine."

"Microsoft has done exactly what they were licensed to do, which is to build a great implementation of the Java platform for the Win32 environment," said Baratz yesterday. "We licensed them to do that, just as we licensed IBM and Apple and Novell and on and on to build their own implementations of Java for their own operating environments. But that is all they [Microsoft] were licensed to do. They committed, like all of our other licensees, to remain compatible. And they have reconfirmed their intention to do so."

Purity of purpose

According to Sun, the 100% Pure Java initiative will provide the following services:

• An industry education campaign centered around the Java Education World Tour 97, which will kick off in February with seminars to be conducted throughout the new year in over 40 cities in North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Rim.
  
  
• A testing and certification process (scheduled for finalization in the first quarter of 1997) to ensure that software vendors using the Java Developers Kit (JDK) build compatible implementations of new applications.
  
  
• A 100% Pure Java logo for inclusion in new product presentation and marketing materials.
  
  
• Web site exposure through the "100% Pure Java Hall of Fame" network. Availability of co-marketing funds for selected software vendors (details of which will be announced at JavaOne in April). And a suite of services for technical and marketing updates.
  
  

"The [compatibility] test for application developers will be very simple," said Baratz. "Not the 5,000 individual tests that were reported in one major newspaper this morning, but a single, simple test that you run your application through. And if you pass that test, you are entitled to use the 100% Pure Java logo on your application package -- along with marketing, branding, cooperative advertising, and cooperative merchandising support. The 5,000-criteria test mentioned in the newspaper applies to operating system providers, who are all now licensed and have all committed to passing the Java-compatibility test suite before delivering their platforms into the marketplace."