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What's brewing in Java's future?

Developers sound off on their anxieties, hopes, and fears about the future of Java on the Windows platform

By Jeff Friesen, JavaWorld.com, 07/24/99

It's no wonder that many companies, developers, and special-interest groups are concerned about Java's future. After all, many have invested a significant amount of time, effort, and financial resources into learning and using this technology. They don't want to see it all go down the tubes because of petty bickering and cutthroat competition.

Groups such as the Java Lobby, an organization of more than 36,000 Java developers who are committed to an open and standardized Java, are trying to make their voices heard on various issues. Developers, worried about the direction Java is taking, hope to remind the corporations vying to control it that there's more to be concerned with than which company will claim majority market share. More and more, independent developers large and small are coming forward to make sure their demands aren't lost on the Java battlefield. This article first offers an overview of the background that led to the current state of affairs, then probes the attitudes of Java developers today, with an eye to uncovering their hopes and fears for the future.

What's happened to Java?

Of course, there are a number of well-reported reasons for the current atmosphere of uncertainty. The chief reason is the as-yet-to-be-determined outcome of the lawsuit filed by Sun Microsystems against Microsoft in 1997. The company that wins this lawsuit will have a significant impact on the future of Java technology. The trial is widely seen as battle for the control of the development of the Java language. The winner, conventional wisdom says, will take all, claiming the right to influence the direction of Java.

But no matter who wins this fight, developers remain concerned that corporate interests will supercede customer input. And that, they fear, could pollute and eventually destroy Java's write-once, run-anywhere strategy.

On one side, advocates of a "100% Pure" Java argue that Microsoft's attempts to "embrace and extend" the language have only perverted the language's original purpose: to run on multiple platforms across heterogeneous environments. The alliance between Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft has only added to the friction. For example, Hewlett-Packard has independently developed its own version of the Java virtual machine (JVM), further raising the specter of a language no one controls.

In an aggressive but secretive move, Microsoft has announced that it is working on a new technology called COOL. Although few details have emerged, there is little doubt that COOL is Microsoft's attempt to compete with Java on the server tier. If Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft can successfully integrate their technologies, Java may face some serious competition from an "extended" cousin.