Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

"Father of Java" Resigns From Sun/Oracle

Posted by timothy on from the oracle-must've-seen-that-coming dept.

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.'"

48 of 396 comments (clear)

  1. One of Many by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 5, Informative

    Several of the biggest names at Sun have departed since the Oracle merger. The memories of Sun are fading fast. IBM probably would have been a better suitor for Sun than Oracle, but now it's all over but the crying.

    1. Re:One of Many by binarylarry · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    2. Re:One of Many by ls671 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      > 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 ?

      --
      Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
    3. Re:One of Many by Omnifarious · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think IBM would've been better too. It's too bad they wanted to lowball on their offer and missed their chance.

      And, yes, I think Oracle is more "evil". I think this is for several reasons:

      1. Oracle hasn't really truly found a way to live with Open Source yet and their core database business is under threat by Open Source solutions.
      2. 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, if you can control their behavior. You can sell them consulting, support and hardware all day without needing any kind of lock, but not software.
      3. Oracle has very little real in-house innovation to speak of. The most innovative things I know of happening at Oracle is btrfs, and that's only really happening at Oracle because the main people who work on it are there.
      4. Oracle thinks it can kill an Open Source competitor by buying it or the technologies it relies on.

      All of those things contrast with IBM. IBM makes its money on hardware and consulting, they've mostly learned to live with Open Source (patent threats not withstanding), and there is some real innovation that happens there from time to time. And I think IBM would be smarter than to think they could really kill an Open Source project by buying it.

      --
      Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
    4. Re:One of Many by fm6 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      IBM wouldn't have been any friendlier to the recent departures. The various Open Source people that Oracle fired were attached to projects that just didn't make sense for Sun. And Gosling hasn't played a major role in Java development for years.

      Anyway, recent departures are nothing compared to the folks who've been abandoning ship for the last 5 years. A huge number of key Java people (most notably Josh Bloch, who really had more to do with the Java APIs in their current form than any one person) have moved to Google. Others left Sun because they couldn't live with the idea of Java going open source.

      But the most emblematic departure, was Andy Bechtolsheim. He pretty much invented the company: Sun exists because he couldn't find an existing company that wanted to license his hardware designs. Then he left because he couldn't convince anybody that Sun needed to be less SPARC-dependent. A decade later, Sun bought up a company he had founded just to get access to the really cool x64 servers he had designed. (I worked on the documentation for one of them.) They made a big thing about getting back "Badge Number 1", but once again, they managed to drive him away. Officially he never left, but his role is so reduced, it's conspicuously a face-saving thing.

    5. Re:One of Many by coredog64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You're looking at this through the rose-tinted glasses of what might have been. Another poster downthread has already mentioned the 100% overlap in the Sun and IBM product lines. I'm not thrilled at some of the things that have played out so far, but I have a hard time seeing how it could have gone any better if IBM bought them out.

    6. Re:One of Many by poor_boi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      IBM would have absolutely been a better steward for Java. They have a controlling interest in the world's most popular Java IDE: Eclipse. And they have better ties with the open source community. And they are a generalist technology company, like Sun was. Oracle tends to specialize. But at the end of the day, too much of Sun's holdings overlapped with IBM's. IBM has their own JEE platform. They have their own hardware divisions. They even have their own Java world-class Java compiler: JDT. And they built their own JVM in Jikes. IBM would have been a better steward of Java. But Oracle had much more to gain from Sun than IBM did, and that's why they were able to offer a better deal to Sun when the chips fell.

    7. Re:One of Many by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oracle and IBM ruthlessly compete in similar markets, so it's hardly fair. DB2 and Websphere are open source? IBM consultants are hardly going to recommend mysql and jboss when they could sell you their own solutions. Single vendor lock-in is just as bad!

      Oh and Oracle's core DB business? Hmmm, I could have sworn they'd moved beyond that, strategically acquiring Peoplesoft, Siebel, BEA and now Sun in recent years - employing an army of consultants to compete with IBM's.

    8. Re:One of Many by X0563511 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Fortunate for us Sun put Java in GPL for us. Oracle can't "undo" that.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    9. Re:One of Many by Mad+Merlin · · Score: 4, Funny

      Furthermore, IBM would surely fuck up Java with endless "enterprise" bloated retardation.

      Continuing the Java tradition, you mean?

      --
      Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
    10. Re:One of Many by Runaway1956 · · Score: 3, Informative

      I dunno. Let's just say that our views are quite different. As a home user without any certifications, I manage to keep my Linux boxes running just fine using free support, available online, and in the documentation. Microsoft boxes cost a good deal of money to keep running. I hear from friends and neighbors and coworkers all the time, that they've taken their machine back to the shop for this, or for that, and forked over another hundred dollars or more.

      Add up the costs of the OS license, a decent AV, all the software they purchase, and those unending trips to a shop to have viruses removed, recover lost data, upgrade this or that, and sometimes to reinstall the operating system. And, don't forget that with each trip, the tech/salesrep invariably tries to sell a newer, more powerful computer.

      Cost. I'll take the free stuff every time.

      So, a kernel update breaks something that I rely on. Big deal, I can roll back the kernel. A driver update breaks something else, I just roll back to the old driver. Yeah, I sometimes use the CLI. I'm not proficient with it, but a quick Google always finds help with whatever. The biggest thing about googling for help, is to use the advanced search, and find RECENT articles and posts about my problem. Trying to use a solution for a similar problem that occured in 2001 is unlikely to work today.

      In short, I can build a nice computer for about a thousand bucks, and run everything I've ever needed or wanted to run for absolutely nothing. My neighbors buy computers for $1500 and up to as much as $3000, and they keep forking out money.

      To me, it makes no sense.

      While Enterprise' costs are multiplied exponentially, their savings are exponentially greater when they use open source. A large organization might spend ten million dollars on Microsoft license - while full Linux support is available for mere hundreds of thousands. And, as time goes by after upgrading to Linus, support becomes less and less of an issue - the enterprise might get away with purchasing minimal support packages "just in case" something serious breaks.

      Whatever - I'll be a Linux and Open Source supporter forever. Unless, of course, something markedly better than Linux comes along. Unlikely, but possible. I keep hoping though!

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    11. Re:One of Many by Ralish · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So would a company that made lots of money and squashed competition leading to fewer and less diverse jobs (and thus less chance for employees to find a better paying job) be "good" or "evil"?

      Um, this is pretty much the dead-on objective of effectively all companies. Make lots of money? Yes. Squash competition? Yes. The more competition, the harder it is to compete, and the less likely your product will be used. Reducing competition by destroying your competitors is an objective of all companies, as by definition, they are a threat to your business. You may not like it (I don't), but that kind of business model and associated ideology is the cornerstone of capitalism. The only real question is do they make lots of money and squash competition legally, by delivering a better product and out-classing their competitors, without violating any applicable laws.

      More employers and business diversity is of course a good thing, and there-in comes the delicate balancing act of ensuring the economy remains healthy against the natural tendency of businesses to damage it for selfish material gains. Typically, government regulation is what is used to achieve this, by holding businesses that violate various agreed on "principles" of fair trading and conduct accountable. Which makes the staunch objections of many to any sort of regulation all the more bizarre as rational analysis of the capitalist model would seemingly conclude that some reasonable degree of regulation is in almost everyones interest, possibly excluding the filthy rich at the top of the hierarchy of enormous multinationals. But, that's another debate!

    12. Re:One of Many by jcr · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    13. Re:One of Many by CarpetShark · · Score: 3, Funny

      I recall this now that GP mentions it. What happened was that he turned up at the interview address, saw that the sign on the building said Microsoft, and left in a rage, screaming something about "time wasters". ;)

    14. Re:One of Many by itlurksbeneath · · Score: 3, Informative

      There were people that Microsoft lured away from DEC because MS needed operating system writers for NT. I hear some of the internals of the kernel resemble VMS quite a bit (even some symbols in common).

      --
      Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.
    15. Re:One of Many by Unoti · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh and Oracle's core DB business? Hmmm, I could have sworn they'd moved beyond that, strategically acquiring Peoplesoft, Siebel, BEA and now Sun in recent years - employing an army of consultants to compete with IBM's.

      The Peoplesoft acquisition is to a great extent all about strengthening their position in the database market. They bought Peoplesoft, announced that the Peoplesoft product is pretty much dying, and you should start thinking about converting to Oracle Apps (Oracle's ERP offering built on top of Oracle DB which competes against Peoplesoft). Peoplesoft runs (ran?) on multiple databases-- the user had a choice. Oracle Apps is built almost entirely on PL/SQL stored procedures, and will never, ever run on any other database than Oracle.

      Those acquisitions you mentioned (at least the Peoplesoft one, the only one that I have been closely involved with personally) are moves designed to kill serious competition and consolidating the marketplace. It's designed to acquire new customers to lock in. It's not about increasing a portfolio of knowledge and capability.

  2. Not the best timing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Looking for a job? Get in line, buddy.

    1. Re:Not the best timing by Nerdfest · · Score: 5, Funny

      Much like Chuck Norris ... it's not hunting, as that implies the possibility of failure. James Gosling goes job *killing*.

    2. Re:Not the best timing by NicknamesAreStupid · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:Not the best timing by greg1104 · · Score: 5, Funny

      You know how sometimes tech jobs request things like "Java: 15 years experience" that leave you screaming at the HR people that the language wasn't even released until 1996? While you're busy crying about that, James Gosling is going to laugh at you and take that job.

  3. Job hunting by wigaloo · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't think James is going to be job "hunting"... Unless it is the kind of hunting where you stay at home and accept "applications" from prospective employers.

    1. Re:Job hunting by Dahamma · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

  4. An interesting graphic by oldhack · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...

    --
    Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
  5. Resigned or was fired? by dkleinsc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Here's why I ask: not because he's not a smart technologist - he clearly is, and while I don't love everything about Java it was a pretty darn good idea.

    However, from a business standpoint Java was basically a disaster, because it required quite a lot of support from Sun while at the same time not giving them something they could sell. To become a standard, they had to give away the basic tools and describe the standard so that other people could make JVMs. Once they did that, there was really nothing that Sun had to sell that its competitors (including open source projects) couldn't build either better or cheaper.

    Now, you could make the same criticism of Microsoft's C# language, except that Microsoft always treated its languages as a loss leader for selling MSDN and Windows server licenses. Since Java was specifically cross-platform, it couldn't do the same for Sun.

    --
    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    1. Re:Resigned or was fired? by greg1104 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Larry Ellison has already stated that he estimates Oracle was making about as much money from Java technology as Sun was. So whether or not the Java business was profitable for Sun, Oracle already knows how to productize it into profit, particularly after their purchase of BEA Weblogic. They paid 8.5B for BEA just to have a leading Java enterprise stack; do you really think they'd have fired Gosling when they consider Java that strategic?

  6. Not a big deal by fm6 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  7. it's not too late by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Funny

    for him to brush up on his vb.net skills

    and maybe he should get some ms access experience

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  8. I never could understand Java by PatPending · · Score: 5, Funny

    Finally long super volatile import Ellison break instanceof native abstract class Glosling.

    --
    What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
    1. Re:I never could understand Java by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Funny

      Do you prefer Perl, $@%#&?

  9. Oh good grief... by IANAAC · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  10. Re:bad by timmarhy · · Score: 5, Funny

    unlike your job at burger king, he would have plenty of money put away to not have to worry about unemployment checks.

    --
    If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
  11. He will be missed. One question though. by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is he quitting? Will he leave all his stuff behind for garbage collectors to pick up? Or will he clean up after him by hand?

    --
    Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
  12. Re:He will be missed. One question though. by spiffmastercow · · Score: 5, Funny

    It depends on whether any of his coworkers use him as a reference.

  13. Re:He will be missed. One question though. by tomhudson · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is he quitting? Will he leave all his stuff behind for garbage collectors to pick up? Or will he clean up after him by hand?

    Unfortunately, his garbage collector is non-deterministic.

  14. Come on, you make money on high-end too by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Come on, you make money on high-end too by bennomatic · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think you're right. I work for a company which builds database driven software, and while we always have our eyes out for newer and better solutions, people I've talked to on the DEV team clearly feel that if you're looking to deliver millions of transactions per hour, Oracle's still the king of the hill.

      --
      The CB App. What's your 20?
    2. Re:Come on, you make money on high-end too by Omnifarious · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In order to get into a position where you can apply the locks and holds you have to make a good product. After you get there you can stop.

      IMHO the industry is full of examples of companies that made excellent products and stopped getting any better or weren't able to move on when a new idea upset the applecart because they were so wedded to the lock-in and high profits they had with their original software, even after that software had become more of an albatross to most companies using it rather than an asset.

      --
      Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
  15. Re:BREAKING NEWS!! "JAVA IS DEAD", SAYS GOSLING!! by Hal_Porter · · Score: 3, Funny

    Java is the fat lady these days.

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  16. Re:bad by Hal_Porter · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yeah but he doesn't have a freezer full of Whoppers

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  17. Re:Microsoft by Hal_Porter · · Score: 3, Funny

    But then Anders Hejlsberg will have him encased in carbonite and mounted on his office wall as a trophy.

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  18. Larry, can we get signed types, properties and clo by melted · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Larry, can we get signed types, properties and closures now, please?

  19. Oracle has no interest in crapifying Java by symbolset · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They just have no interest in paying to produce free software. They're not in the business of giving stuff away. As much as it drives Oracle database sales, that's what they'll do and the connection has to be pretty direct and immediate.

    Same with OpenOffice, OpenSolaris, MySQL, VirtualBox and all the others. Mr. Ellison has a pretty solid "row or get off the boat" philosophy. He didn't buy Sun for its freeware. He wanted it so he could play the bigger game.

    The economy tanked and some legendary companies were put in distress. This is why prudent companies put aside a cash cushion - so that they can leverage distress and acquire cheaply valuable IP, assets, brilliance and brands. With the market lining up as a war between Cisco and HP for a converged solution including server, storage, network and software, Oracle looked across the vast swath of distressed companies and saw buying Sun as an opportunity to make it a three dog race.

    Ellison has no intention of losing this race and has no problem casting out what he sees as ballast - in this case development costs that don't yield immediate profits he can use to get the rest of the pieces he needs to compete on this field. He'll keep Solaris and parts of VirtualBox that he can take proprietary because he needs an OS and a VM. He still needs a switch and router biz to make a go of it, so look for a big buy there.

    It's time all hands got to forking - or at least mirroring.

    --
    Help stamp out iliturcy.
  20. Re:He will be missed. One question though. by martin-boundary · · Score: 4, Funny

    If he's looking for some advice in this regard, I have a few pointers...

    java.lang.PointersAreNotAllowedException
    at org.slashdot.javascript.JokeFactory.initGlobal(JokeFactory.java:207)
    at joke.dynamics.Woosh.execute(Woosh.java:17)
    at joke.Main.loadDynamics(Unknown Source)
    at joke.Main.go(Unknown Source)
    at joke.Main.access$0(Unknown Source)
    at joke.Main$3.run(Unknown Source)
    at java.awt.event.InvocationEvent.dispatch(InvocationEvent.java:209)
    at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java:597)
    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForFilters(EventDispatchThread.java:269)
    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForFilter(EventDispatchThread.java:184)
    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(EventDispatchThread.java:174)
    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:169)
    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:161)
    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(EventDispatchThread.java:122)

  21. Re:Here, I printed my resume on a business card by ClosedSource · · Score: 5, Funny

    HR would take one look at that and say "This guy must be joking, he didn't invent coffee" and then toss the resume in the circular file.

  22. Re:I hope he has to maintain a legacy Java system by binarylarry · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually that's a pretty valid point. .NET doesn't have an IDE that provides the tools, community and broad scope that Eclipse does. A lot of the newer features in Visual Studio today were added in a vain attempt to catch up to Eclipse.

    Eclipse is it's own ecosystem, which you can't say for Visual Studio and especially not any of the horrible open source .NET IDE offerings.

    --
    Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
  23. Re:He will be missed. One question though. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    They asked for his help but he refused to even give any pointers.

  24. Of course.. by Junta · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
  25. Re:Perhaps now he can admit a few mistakes in Java by swilver · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And there we have it. The reason why people use Java.

    There's no #DEFINE that turns a readable program that everybody knows into a program that has you looking through .h files every 3 seconds. You cannot "redefine" things, so a program is ALWAYS recognizable. An int is an int. A long is a long. The preprocessor was not included exactly to avoid these kinds of things.

    That and the Java coding standards that Sun created is why Java projects have a much shorter learning curve. You can be productive within a day on most Java projects, unlike some of the C projects I've seen, even the ones that are generally considered to be well structured.