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Java Thrown Back in Windows, For Now
darnellmc writes: "According to this News.com article, Microsoft has decided to include their JVM in the next Windows XP service pack. They are doing this in an attempt to avoid Sun's recent lawsuit against them for anti-trust violations. I wonder if the recent decision allowing the nine states' suit to continue had anything to do with this? Of course it did. MS plans not to have the JVM in future versions of Windows though."
In this case, yes.
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Who is the winner here? It's certainly not developers. We're either going to have to code to an ancient, incompatible version of Java because it's the "default", or we're going to have to keep explaining to people the difference between the Sun JVM and the Microsoft JVM (and either including a JVM with our applications or forcing people to download yet another JVM, something our customers won't give a flying @%^$ about), or we're going to have to give up using Java completely.
And consumers aren't the winners either, because the version of Java that ships won't run very many newer Java applications, so they are still going to have to download a JVM when they want to do the latest Java stuff.
Sun certainly isn't the winner; they've spent far too much money on a battle that doesn't win them very much at all in terms of hard cash. (I mean, I don't see Macromedia complaining that Flash isn't built into Windows, and I don't see AOL wringing its arms about AIM and ICQ not being included with the OS -- why should Sun be any different?) Plus, Sun looks silly. They sued, they won, and they got what they wanted -- and then (as if they had never expected to win in the first place) they sued again to force Microsoft to do the opposite of what they had wanted Microsoft to do before.
The only (marginal) winner that I can see is Microsoft. Microsoft has managed to completely destroy any hopes of Java being a great client-side language -- by including an incompatible version of Java, then not including it, and then including that same ancient crappy version again. Java has been relegated to web services, where it's just barely holding its own against ASP and PHP. (PHP is on 24% of web servers now, BTW... many more than Java servlets or ASP.)
So, in the end, Sun spent a lot of money and lost; Microsoft spent a bit less money and lost; and we spent money on Windows and... well... we lost. Scott McNealy, I hope you're happy.
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Java promised "write once, run anywhere," and gave us "write once, debug everywhere." It's also nice to see that the Parrot folks are concentrating on making Parrot small and fast.
People are complaining a lot about how MS is only supporting a really old version of Java. Well, it's not just MS. For instance, Apple got way behind the curve with Java for a period of several years. The sheer size of Java made it difficult for people to implement, and then reimplement, and then re-reimplement, ... The nice thing about Parrot is that all the other bits besides the VM are nice and mature. (OK, Perl 6 is a prtty drastic rewrite, but Perl 6 is going to be able to run Perl 5 code, and there will also be an automatic translator.) Java has always been too much of a moving target for my taste.
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to have every AOL CD on the planet contain then-current JVMs which get installed with AOL. Sun could have AOL do incremental upgrades while people are chatting with AIM - they'd probably not notice a few K here and there being chewed up to bring new JVM upgrades. Everyone would have latest JVM. Java advocates would have *nothing* to complain about - if people didn't run Java apps it would be because they suck, not because of some evil ploy to keep Java out of the hands of people. MS manages to get people to upgrade whole operating systems - and they make it relatively painless. Sun can't seem to get a 20meg binary in people's hands, nor can they seem to make an installer system so I don't have to mess with command line crap to run a Java application. WebStart is half-assed, but it's a step in the right direction. Why don't they associate ".class" files with the java binary when it gets installed? This would make it so much easier to distribute apps - here, put this disc in and click 'myapp.class'. Nope - nothing's that simple with Sun, but they BITCH to high heaven about how bad MS is treating them. If they took half the money they spend on bitching and lawsuits and channeled it into getting Java into people's hands, making worthwhile *consumer* apps in Java, the Java mindshare would go through the roof.
Let's see:
Java was meant for TVs and coffee makers.
Whoops, no, Java will replace the OS on clients.
Whoops, no, sorry, "java applets suck" and all us Java advocates *really* meant that Java was really meant to run on the server all along.
Which 'whoops!' is going to come next? When Sun manages to lose whatever foothold they have in the server arena, we'll be hearing "yeah, well, servers suck - Java will *really* kill everyone in PDAs".
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I imagine the main reason they're including the JVM is because they'll also be including the .NET runtime in SP1. They lawyers probably told them that it wouldn't look so bad if they were to also bundle a version of a competitor's runtime in with the upgrade. When people turn round and say 'hey you're bundling .NET, too' they can shrug it off because they're uncluding Java support as well.
You can't download a current JVM from MS, but that is only important to Sun's PR lackey's, not in the real world.
MS's own JVM works flawlessly on every web site I've ever visited which required Java. Joe Average Consumer doesn't care who wrote it or or even what it is, as long as it works.
Joe Educated Consumer might care, but there aren't enough of that breed to ever make Sun an important player in the client-side language market.
No flaming here, but I've never seen a client-side Java application that wasn't mediocre, anyway. I know that it has been relatively successful in the area of web services, but the public doesn't see that, so Sun's mindshare is particularly low, despite their recent move toward a more open Java.
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Why, you ask? "The decision to remove Microsoft's Java implementation was made because of Sun's strategy of using the legal system to compete with Microsoft," Microsoft spokesman Jim Cullinan said in a statement. Cullinan said the company will temporarily support Java "to minimize any potential disruption among our customers."
But is Microsoft admitting that they are punitively trying to harm Java and Sun? No, of course not. Microsoft claims that the settlement they signed when they were found to have created Java tools to intentionally fool programmers into writing incompatible code forces them to drop Java support.
How, you ask? "The settlement agreement between the companies prevents Microsoft from making any changes -- including any security fixes -- to our Java implementation after January 1, 2004," Cullinan said. "We will not put our customers or Windows at risk so you can anticipate that there will be no Java in Windows from that point forward."
One of the antitrust penalties proposed by the states would force Microsoft to carry support for Java. Now why do you suppose they would have suggested that?
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I am getting tired of hearing "Write once, Run everywhere - Yeah, right!" as though Sun somehow put something over on us, and Microsoft is not doing anything wrong.
I think the correct statement is "Write once, Run on any standards compliant JVM" - which Microsoft is not including in windows. In providing the older version, they (Microsoft) are giving us (and SUN as well as the courts) the finger as well as the opportunity to "Write once, Run on any JVM that it happens to run on - guaranteed to have problems with some other JVMs as ours isn't compatable with the current standards. Oh well, so sorry - ha! Fools!"
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