"Father of Java" Resigns From Sun/Oracle

Thrashing Rage writes "James Gosling has confirmed he is leaving Sun/Oracle: 'Yes, indeed, the rumors are true: I resigned from Oracle a week ago (April 2nd). I apologize to everyone in St. Petersburg who came to TechDays on Thursday expecting to hear from me. I really hated not being there. As to why I left, it's difficult to answer: just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good. The hardest part is no longer being with all the great people I've had the privilege to work with over the years. I don't know what I'm going to do next, other than take some time off before I start job hunting.'"

Comments

Re:One of Many

[binarylarry]

My bet is he'll be at Google before the end of the year.

Re:Job hunting

[Dahamma]

Yup. And it seems these days "Software/Internet Pioneers" have three choices: retire, start a new company, or work at Google.

An interesting graphic

[oldhack]

This from the blog of Gosling, the man himself:

http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/so_long_old_friend1

If you browse his blog entries, you see the noose was tightening, as was expected. SUN and Oracle may both be in the Valley, but their cultures were radically different.

Another good guys sank...

Re:One of Many

[ls671]

> IBM probably would have been a better suitor

This is interesting and I am tempted to agree.

Of course Sun avoiding becoming bankrupt by some other financing means would have been preferable but faced with a buy-out, I think I would have preferred IBM too.

So my question to /. is this:

Are you and I the only ones who think IBM would have been better ?

Second corollary question, since my judgment might be altered by my own perception of both companies :

Am I the only one perceiving Oracle as more, so to speak, "evil" than IBM ?

Not a big deal

[fm6]

When I was at Sun, Gosling had less and less to do with actual work on Java. By the time I left the company, he seemed to be mainly an evangelist. Java was almost entirely his brainchild, of course, but it's been a long time since he contributed to it in any significant way.

Sun had a fair number of people who were paid to do more or less what they wanted. Most of the time I was at Sun, Gosling was more or less in that category. Some of these folks did some really brilliant work, but I'm not sure they really earned the money Sun paid them. That wasn't a big deal when everybody wanted Sun's high-end hardware and there was plenty of money for this sort of thing. Towards the end, though, money got tight, and there were fewer people like that. But even during the last days, I think they really had more Blue Sky People then they could really afford.

Oh good grief...

[IANAAC]

As to why I left, it's difficult to answer: just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good.

Just say that you can't answer. It's very likely that it's not at all difficult to answer and you just can't talk about it.

You did some fine work, but things have changed. That often happens.

Re:Not the best timing

[NicknamesAreStupid]

In a way, he may have a harder time that you think. At Sun, he could pretty much do as he pleased. There aren't many openings for "do as you please." Google or IBM might actually want him to be "one of the team." Think he still wants to be a "team player?" He might prefer to start his own team. I would.

Come on, you make money on high-end too

[SuperKendall]

Oracle still makes their money on software. Making money by selling people extremely expensive software licenses only really works if you can get various kinds of locks and holds on them

It ALSO works if you produce a far better product than other solutions that scales far better.

I don't use Oracle these days, but a decade ago it would be laughable to say Oracle did as well as they did by "locks and holds", they simply had a very powerful database that a lot of technical people liked using.

I would wager that is still true today, though for most common business uses even MySQL is fine at this point.

Re:One of Many

[jcr]

Microsoft seriously offended him the last time he went there for an interview. I don't think they'll get another chance.

-jcr

Of course..

[Junta]

It seems Oracle is explicitly disinterested in Java, so IBM may get the one thing they would have wanted on the cheap, a chance at the people behind Sun's Java as they leave/are forced out of Oracle.