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Java Evangelist Leaves Sun After MS Settlement
aeoo writes "The Register says that Rich Green, the vice president of developer platforms and the major public voice for Java is 'quitting Sun in disgust' due to the recent settlement between Sun and Microsoft. The article hints that there may be more to follow. On the other hand, there is an article at eWeek with a different slant, saying that Rich Green tendered his resignation prior to the settlement. What impact, if any, will this have on open sourcing Java? It looks like Sun is still considering it."
Given the nature of Microsoft's initial intentions (not interoperability, but domination), I would understand his fury. He seems to be a man of his word and put his money where his mouth was - which you have to respect, whether you agreed with him or not, and is more than you can say about MSFT.
Can anybody explain to me how somebody quitting over Sun's decision to work with Microsoft actually brings Java closer to being open source? Sorry to burst a bubble, but on the face of it, Sun's getting further from considering that...
Odds are more likely he'll take a position with a salary commensurate with having bee a VP at Sun.
Timeline 2004-2007:
1. Sun will turn anti-Linux
2. IBM will offer to buy Java from Sun (Sun will refuse)
3. The next software war will involve Microsoft and IBM directly
4. IBM will win.
It takes one monopolist to beat another.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
However, a Sun spokesperson said Green actually tendered his resignation "long before last week. It was coincidental timing, not related timing."
You mean to say that there was no indication to a top internal person that the decision to accept a 2B payoff was being considered, until exactly when it happened? Almost certainly he agreed to wait until the decision was announced before he quit. The fact that he decided "long before" does not mean it was unrelated...
I am not a great fan of Sun , but come on, it's their product and whether they choose to open source it or not, should be their decission. After all isn't that what choice is all about ?
If the only choice left is open source , then what choice is it ?
Besides , the java specs are wide open for the world to see and implement . So what's the problem , don't the companies of the likes of IBM, BEA , etc have developers who can code if not any better , atleat on par with sun's java developers ?
Now if by open sourcing , they mean, relinquish the control over Java Specs, then that's a totally different thing. And even to that I don't agree, Sun after all did put in a lot of time and efforts to make Java acceptable in the Corporate world.
Merits and Demerits of Java asides, no one can deny the fact that Java is being used for a lot of business software development. And Corporate world is always more welcoming to Products backed up be business oriented companies than a utopic concept. Don't forget that linux is gaining acceptance in the corporate world , mostly because of the efforts of IBM , rather than the collective RTFM attitude of most kernel developers.
For all those who want Java to be open sourced, or open speced (if there is such a word) , why not divert some of those efforts in creating a cross platform development language, and make it as acceptable in the corporate world as Java. Then the problem will automatically go away.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
McNealy finally grew up, and therefore Sun's corporate policy with respect to Microsoft finally grew up. They were fighting a losing battle against the software titan and Linux--and McNealy must have known this for a long time, because the deal recently struck with Microsoft had actually been in the works for a good long while. Corporate contacts were reportedly telling him to grow up, and it looks as if he has, if not in spirit, then at least in practice.
They are a power player and have no intention of fading away, and they have invested far too much in Java to let it fade away either. And regarding Java itself, there are great things that both Sun and Microsoft have done for it (from a purely objective standpoint of programming, this is very true, and if you can't see that, you're blinded by dogma). The agreement between Sun and Microsoft is specifically designed to facilitate interoperability, and of course this includes Java, and Java components and applications.
It may not be the direction some had originally envisioned, but prevalence (or heck, just survival, if you consider worst-case scenarios) in a different form is often a far better outcome than the death of the original due to obstinacy. If Mr. Green is so dedicated to an outmoded cause that he's willing to give up his employment at Sun, well, I'll give him points for principle but none for pragmatism.
I have no illusions that Sun is going to open-source one of its most prized, closely-guarded secrets. They are almost Microsoftian in the protection of certain code. Even Green himself said, "Neither IBM nor Sun knows if it's feasible to fulfill the [open source goal] and meet the constraints." That's not a full-fledged denial, but it definitely represents uncertainty, and Sun's pact with Microsoft has perhaps provided a more secure context in which they can continue to develop and market their proprietary products, now armed with a few new advantages.
The coolest voice ever.
If we want an open source Java, I think the right thing to pursue is Kaffe, gcj, and Gnu CLASSPATH. I would love it if Sun did open source Java and such an action may be the best way to ensure Java's long-term survival, but somehow I have a feeling that Scott and the Sun lawyers won't have the guts or the will to take the risks and do this.
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Create a WAP server
Would be cool if it happened, but does not seem like it. This article actually indicates that Green played a role in brokering the deal -
... ...
In fact, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company said Green played an essential role in Sun's negotiations with Microsoft to come to last week's 10-year, $1.6 billion deal.
Meanwhile, Sun would not disclose where Green was going, but said the company has held the position "for quite a while" for him. Said one source: "He didn't want to leave until the Microsoft deal was done."
And here is the blurb from the ZDNet article -
A Sun representative said Green was instrumental in brokering the company's legal settlement with Microsoft.
The first article also says that Green is planning on doing a startup. Therefore, whatever it was, Green would have definitely received significant amount of compensation for his role.
Which would mean that, him going renegade and helping start something Opensource based on Java would be quite unlikely. When big sums of money are involved, especially with companies like Microsoft, you can be assured that they would have taken due precautions precisely against this kind of thing - especially since he was supposed to testify against them.
On the other hand, he *might* just rally to make Java Opensource - which I believe, is more likely.
What could Sun achieve by proceeding with its 2002 lawsuit? McNealy had presented the fight in apocalyptic terms: Mankind vs Microsoft.
Sun staff must be wondering if the company, which defined itself by its opposition to Microsoft, has a reason to exist.
What does Sun stand for, now?
It's starting to sound like MS bought some Java. There's a lot of shady information about the deal between the companies, and that "undisclosed" amount of money Sun will be paying is awfully curious.
Sun is really dumb for doing this. They don't stand a chance of competing long-term with Linux/Windows & Intel/AMD. Their main asset is Java, not their hardware or operating system. If they've just given MS some control over their most valuable asset, then they may have just dug their own grave.
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
When you consider the amount that Microsoft just used to pay off Sun, the EU fine is relatively small potatoes. Of course, they're already getting an ROI from the Sun pay-off.
11 loosing quarters, soon to be 12.. That's 3 years, all losses. You can't hemorrage cash and their stock price reflects this.
Chapter 11 coming to Bankruptcy Court near you.
-All your stock options are belong to us.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Java is being driven largely by other companies... IBM, BEA, Oracle and Borland...... I don't see that sun makes alot on Java. The real competitor to windows is and always will be linux not java. However IBM has known for a while that Java works quite well crossplatform. For years I've been able to develop on Windows and deploy on Solaris or Linux now. If you want you can run Windows boxes for servers instead. Please no crack pot replies about Applets. The vast majority of work with Java now is server side, and for all intents and purposes it is write once run anywhere as long as you have the same server on all you platforms. This something .Net cannot do, and probably never will since it's not in MS's interest to have .Net portable. I know about Mono, but they are way behind and MS and probably always will be.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
He seems to be a man of his word and put his money where his mouth was -
What a marvelously simplistic view. Mr. Green was supporting an old, futile cause. Sun is not going to take over the desktop or server business. Java is not going to become the end-all be-all of enterprise software. Microsoft, Linux, and UNIX have all already done a fine job of that (or very close to it). It may be as simple as that Mr. Green actually believed all of McNealy's prior rhetoric ("network computer"? please) and had his airy ideology punched with a horse-needle when McNealy finally decided to engage in bit of corporate pragmatism.
which you have to respect, whether you agreed with him or not, and is more than you can say about MSFT.
You're telling me Microsoft doesn't put their money where their mouth is? Regarding Windows and the Xbox, for example, they've repeatedly said that they're here for the long haul and that they're not leaving. And you know what? I believe them. Because they have lots of money to put where their mouth is.
The coolest voice ever.
This story brought it into focus for me: I was an early adopter of Java, but I just don't care about Java anymore. Sun promised to deliver an applet platform, but then changed directions to server-side programming and a half-hearted effort at a cross-platform toolkit. Frankly, for server-side programming and cross-platform GUIs, there are far better choices than Java.
I'd still like to see something better than JavaScript and Flash for applet-like functionality, but it's clear Sun isn't going to deliver anymore.
see, thr problem that a lot of us /.ers have is that we see sun and ms as adversaries because we have in the past. the business community and minds see a sun/ms alliance as smart and necessary. seeing as MS has a 86% profit margin (!) from windows and sun still is a unix company (thats where its money comes from), both of these companies have the same problem: linux. without them settling their differences and realizing they arent each others problems, they are trying to move forward positively.
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[insert funny
Good question, and it's about time to bring the subject up. On both Slashdot and Groklaw, a lot of people have got the idea in their heads that Sun will now join forces with MS to attack Linux, and yet all of the evidence of Sun's business initiatives suggest exactly the opposite. (I deeply respect PJ's skills in legal research, especially concerning the SCO case, but her post about the Sun/MS settlement was one of the most bizarre tirades I've ever seen. And I just noticed she put up another one today.)
People, where on Earth do you get this idea? As some have already pointed out, Sun is now getting close to the world's largest vendor of a Linux distribution, after the China and Walmart deals, and Linux is a supported platform for all of the Sun software products. From a business perspective, Sun doesn't seem to have much choice but to go with Linux. Back in the bad old days of Internet bubble, when everyone thought that they had a lot of money and that they had to spend a whole lot of it on Sun hardware, life was great in Santa Clara. But for years now, people have been looking for low-cost solutions in both hardware and software, and Sun didn't get it for too long, resulting in huge losses, layoffs, and a steep decline in stock price. They've got to stop the bleeding. Now they're going out of their way to come up with low-cost products, and Linux is a big part of it. What motive could they possibly have to change that now, especially after they just posted losses for the 10th time in 12 quarters?
As for the MS settlement, I have rarely seen such a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't response. Back when Sun filed the suit, there was a chorus of protest at Slashdot, outrage at any attempt to use the courtrooms in any way at all. "Build better products, dammit! They're trying to gain in the courts what they can't get in the market!" Those were the most common mantras. Now Sun has discontinued the suit and collected a settlement, and people in the same forums are responding with -- outrage, all over again! What exactly is Sun expected to do? Were they supposed to draw a trial out as long as possible, through years of appeals?
Moreover, everyone seems to be saying that Sun has capitulated to MS. I am the only one who suspects that it may be the other way around? Sun threatened to sue for over a billion to penalize MS for anti-competitive behavior toward Java. Now they're collecting about 2 billion, and have reached agreements about technical co-operation concerning Java, as well as
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
It seems to me, instead of all this back room dancing, Microsoft should just follow their traditional plan if they want to destroy Linux. They seem intent on hiding their true contempt for this stable product and its threat to their core OS tree, so they work deals with companies like Sun and SCO to nick away at Linux and avoid any posture which might indicate Linux as a major contender.
It seems to me, if they were smart, Microsoft would do what they've always done. Come out with a MS-branded version of Unix that at first was open, and then progressively turn it into a bloated, un-compatible mess that only works with their products. They did this with DOS; they should just do the same thing with Linux. The way I figure, Microsoft Linux 2006 will run everything, then by the time Microsoft Linux 2008 comes out, it suddenly won't run Apache or Sendmail, etc.
Huh? What about RMI? What about JNI? Having to find work-arounds for that caused me a few sleepless weeks. I even used "delegate" as a variable in one piece of code that someone else later tried to build with J++ ...!
It's ancient history now, but check this: JavaWorld article.
Dude, the MSJ++ product gratuitously used the extensions. It didn't make it that obvious.
> Sun claimed such features could harm the portability of java. But extending a programming language is not a crime.
It's a breach of contract if you say you won't do it, then do it and stick the other guy's trademark on it. Which is what MS did. They called it "Java". It wasn't Java. Sun own that mark, and IMHO they did the Right Thing in defending what it stands for. And they won that one.
Of course, what was amusing at the time was that Netscape's VM was far less compliant than MS's. But that was because it was so bug-ridden - lots of comments floating around about "malice vs stupidity"... :-)
Go on. Add the JVM to your list of reasons to hate them! You won't be alone...
I'd consider Java a mechanism to keep customers from being locked into a particular hardware && software platform, thus making it possible for Sun to keep selling hardware.
And I'd say it has succeeded, as Java's now back on Windows as part of the deal. Which is consistant with the eWeek story.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
Provably untrue. Read on.
First of all, I've never heard that AFC constituted a basis of the lawsuit (I may be wrong). And most importantly, Sun didn't just "dislike" the extensions; they were forbidden by a contract that MS signed. MS's JVM failed the compatibility test suite, which it is required by contract to do, else the product cannot legally be called "Java". The MS JVM was incompatible in at least the following ways:
Have a look here.
Not a crime, strictly speaking, because that would denote a violation of criminal law, but it was breach of contract, which is a violation of civil law. Microsoft signed a contract which said that they couldn't do this, and did it anyway, and for that they were duly punished by the court.
And you're blaming Sun! Incredible that Microsoft can thumb their noses at the law, and people go around blaming everyone but them.
The rationale for these requirements is to assure that Java is compatible across platforms, and MS's JVM would have surely have undermined Java as a cross-platform language. So I have to disagree with you, extending the language that way is not OK.
Based on how badly you've gotten the facts so far, I assume you're making up this assertion out of thin air. Sun could only decide any such thing if there are contractural obligations forbidding such extensions. As long as the compatibility test suite is passed, then the JVM implementation is usually OK; AFAIK, extensions beyond that are not forbidden.
They sure are, but they can't use the core language or API if they're not there or significantly altered, as was the case in the MS JVM.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
What else besides Microsoft stuff have you developed in? What does .Net provide that say Java doesn't that gives you more productivity?
.Net that give you this productivity increase? How much of an increase would you say it is over other languages like Java? Why?
.net, well specifically c# is bad? No, but there will always be that one limitation... only runs on Microsoft servers.... Don't fool yourself in to thinking you will run any serious app on anything but Windows.
What type of applications do you develop with
I am being serious about these questions because every time I hear someone say what you just typed they have not worked with anything but Microsoft development tools. Yes they may have had a college class or two with some other language, but no real development. I continue to talk to "developers" who think that Java web development is still servlets. They have no clue about JSP's let alone custom tags.
Does that mean I think
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
Sun's statements have been a bit more subtle than SCO's (that's not too tough), but they have certainly made no bones about throwing FUD towards Linux.
Check out this article from immediately after SCO announced the lawsuit. McNealy was immediately commenting on their licensing position, FUD about an audit committee, and another wonderful FUD inspiring comment: "We think open source is wonderful and good, but we also believe in copyright and the rule of law,".
Contrast that to the comments from HP: "HP is unaware of any intellectual property infringement within Linux." And, Larry Ellison was already connecting Microsoft to the effort..
Sun is now getting close to the world's largest vendor of a Linux distribution
I have seen this claim before, but I have not seen any statistics that support this. This article from a year ago has Sun at a tiny fraction of the Linux sales of IBM, Dell, or HP. This article reporting on Q4'03 sales has similat stats, with HP, IBM, and Dell way out in front of everyone else. The only articles I found that gave Sun a decent percentage were those reporting UNIX sales, where Sun's SPARC/Solaris systems were counted. I'm not sure what the China agreement will amount to, but Linux systems have been available from Walmart for a long time, and they have not sold well at all.
And, I agree with your assessment of Sun's sales over the internet bubble, and how it changed. But, I see that as the reason for their spewing FUD about Linux, not the reason they are embracing it.
Basically, Sun sees the trends, which have been building for years, and they see that they can try to embrace it or be steamrolled by it. But, like Sun's previous Linux efforts over the years, it's half assed. They say "buy our Linux desktop" in one breath, then spread anti-Linux FUD in the next.. I don't see that as a recipe for success.
If you worked with JSP then you know of things like custom tags. In my opinion JSP is quite a bit ahead of ASP.
.net stuff use anything but Microsoft. The same isn't said for C or Java.
.net then you need to seriously look at Java again. It does everthing, and then some(container managed entity beans), that .net does. The core difference is that it doesn't lock you in to Microsoft.
.Net will never work well on any platform other than Windows. Microsoft will make sure of that.
You like Javascript the best? Wow you are the only person I have talked/written to that says that. Weird. Most people hate it.
If you believe that Mono will ever bring quality C sharp apps to Linux then you better start learning another language. Name an instance in Microsofts past that shows how they have worked with another vendor to run their apps on a non Microsoft platform. I am glad that these people want to develop Mono, but to be honest I can never see any I.T. shop that is doing
Again, if you like
I am not trying to be a jerk here. I just want to warn you that having worked with Microsoft for a while, they will make things easy at the cost of security and scale. They will NEVER allow their cash cow Windows to be jeprodised. Their apps tend not to scale well. If you want I can point you to some shops that are probably going to close soon that bet the farm with Microsoft. One in particular has had the boys from Redmond in for a while and this was some of the recommendations.
1. Reboot your servers every night. Granted this company has over 400 Win2k boxes.
2. Buy more hardware. Yet people like me have shown that you could scale to what they want with some effort using non Microsoft.
The last one kills me.
3. Get rid of Oracle and go with SQL server. Yet their DB and connection is not a factor at all. This is the ONLY non Microsoft product they own, and yet Microsoft "techs" want it ripped out.
I can name many other companies if you like. I don't want to say Microsoft won't work at all, it will, and in some smaller shops it might work well. I just want to warn people what they are getting in to before they spend their hard earned money.
Please Please Please take from this that
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.