Newsletter sign-up
View all newsletters

Enterprise Java Newsletter
Stay up to date on the latest tutorials and Java community news posted on JavaWorld

Sponsored Links

Optimize with a SATA RAID Storage Solution
Range of capacities as low as $1250 per TB. Ideal if you currently rely on servers/disks/JBODs

JavaWorld.com > Java Enterprise Edition >

Sun fights for Java, but not alone

Enterprise leaders, disruptors wrestle for stake in evolving Java ecosystem

By Jon Brodkin, JavaWorld.com, 01/28/09

  • Print
  • Feedback
.

Sun Microsystems has a long history of innovation, and any list of the company's greatest achievements must include the development of Java. But Sun is facing well-publicized financial problems, which have some observers wondering if the company might be carved up into several smaller entities or sold to a rival. For some in the Java community, the uncertainty about Sun's future increases the urgency of long-simmering questions about Sun's role with the Java platform. Is Sun still relevant to Java, and does it wield too much power over the technology?

The Java programming language was released as open source software in 2006 and 2007, eliminating the "potential nightmare scenario" -- in Gartner analyst Mark Driver's words -- of Sun going out of business and giving Java an untimely death. But some Java vendors say Sun still wields too much power over Java technology and is stifling innovation.

Related on JavaWorld

More perspective on the topics in this article:

"Sun has done a good job in the past as a steward of Java but the future of Java is more than Sun," says Sacha Labourey, CTO of Red Hat's JBoss division. Sun takes the lead on new technical specifications and companies that want to use the Java trademark must pass compatibility tests and pay Sun for a license allowing them to do so, Driver notes.

New Java technology specifications are developed by the Java Community Process, which was founded in 1998 and is intended to foster evolution of the Java platform through collaboration. Labourey, who represents Red Hat on the JCP's executive committee, says the organization has not adapted to today's reality.

"There has been some denial here and Sun has way too much power," Labourey says. As a case in point, he notes an ongoing dispute involving Sun and the Apache Software Foundation, the latter of which accuses Sun of placing intellectual property rights restrictions on a license needed to demonstrate that the Apache Harmony Project is compatible with Java SE.

"Essentially, Sun has the preponderance of the power," says SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson . "If Sun really wants something, it's going to happen, and if Sun really hates it, it's not going to happen."

Labourey argues that cash-flow problems have affected Sun's ability to innovate on top of the Java platform.

"In the first eight years it went fine because Sun had plenty of money," he says. "They were strong innovators and quite frankly they did a good job of stewarding Java. But after that they went through slightly worse times and they had to cut down on innovation."

One of Sun's chief architects says the company is still fully capable of helping to improve the Java platform, though.

"People have been questioning whether Sun is relevant to Java ever since we stopped being the only company that produced Java products," says Danny Coward, who is Sun's chief architect for client software and the company's representative to the JCP executive committee for both the Java standard edition (SE) and enterprise edition (EE). "I think in the EE and SE space we're certainly one of the leading contributors to the future evolution of the platform."

  • Print
  • Feedback

Resources

JavaWorld podcasts