"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

One of Many

[WrongSizeGlass]

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.

Re:One of Many

[Omnifarious]

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.

Re:One of Many

[fm6]

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.

Re:One of Many

[X0563511]

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

Not the best timing

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking for a job? Get in line, buddy.

Re:Not the best timing

[Nerdfest]

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

Re:Not the best timing

[greg1104]

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.

Job hunting

[wigaloo]

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.

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...

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.

it's not too late

[circletimessquare]

for him to brush up on his vb.net skills

and maybe he should get some ms access experience

I never could understand Java

[PatPending]

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

Re:bad

[timmarhy]

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

Re:He will be missed. One question though.

[spiffmastercow]

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

Re:Here, I printed my resume on a business card

[ClosedSource]

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.

Re:I hope he has to maintain a legacy Java system

[binarylarry]

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.