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How to kill Java dead, dead, dead

Why client-side Java must be eliminated despite its widespread use

By Galen Gruman, InfoWorld, 01/15/13

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Websites that still use Java, such as some banks, telcos, and airlines, will quickly adjust once more operating systems block it, just as websites have largely done after Apple blocked Flash in iOS. Today, only BlackBerry 7 OS runs unrestricted Flash on the mobile side, and the world is none the worse off.

Of course, despite Adobe's attempt to make Flash the common front-end UI technology for mission-critical apps such as ERP and CRM, Flash essentially was used only for video playback. The various codecs such as H.264 in HTML5 easily replaced Flash for that decidedly nonmission-critical purpose.

Java is still widely used for the front end of mission-critical apps and Web services -- thousands if not hundreds of thousands of them. That's why getting rid of Java on the client side will be tough. If Java went away tomorrow, many banking and e-commerce websites would cease to function, as would many electronic medical records systems and tons of specialty Web apps, from building inspector reporting tools to online voting.

Yes, online voting: France's online voting system requires Java to function. Without Java, rural and overseas voters are stuck, as there is no concept of a mail-in ballot there. (France's online voting systems also depend on specific versions of Java, so Mac users couldn't vote online in that country in last year's election.)

Those "unscheduled outages" would be devastating if OS X and Windows suddenly blocked Java, as the feds essentially asked us to do this week. If Apple couldn't make OS X Lion users suck it up and live without Java, Microsoft certainly can't do that in Windows given the hundredfold more apps in the Windows world than in the OS X world.

But here's what Apple and Microsoft can and should do: Announce that the next major versions of OS X and Windows will not run Java, period. Developers will thus have a deadline to convert their apps to Java-free versions -- a strategy that worked wonders for the major effort needed to prevent the Y2K crisis in 2000. Of course, that was a real deadline, and there's a danger that Microsoft or Apple might blink and extend the deadline, which would let developers delay even more.

To help push developers along, Apple and Microsoft should market Java-free, just like grocers market "fat-free" and "GMO-free," as an aspirational advantage and not a deficit.

But users aren't the real problem; businesses are. As much as IT staffers moan about Java, they hate to update software and operating systems, and their corporations hate to pay for it. Just listen to IT whine about how quickly Apple makes users update to OS X (about four years after release is the effective cutoff, versus six to 10 years for Windows depending on the hardware quality). Then imagine if they were told that by 2015 the then-current operating systems and the apps that run on them will need to be Java-free. Remember, parts of the U.S. Department of Defense still run Windows 2000. Yet most Java apps are those sold to businesses and are even developed by businesses internally.


For more enterprise computing news, visit InfoWorld. Story copyright InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.

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