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Sun Withdraws Java from Standards Process
An anonymous reader pointed us to a story over at ZD Net about Sun withdrawing Java from the ECMA Standards body. They say they want to protect the "Integrity" of the company's investment in Java.
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There are differences between what Sun is doing and what Microsoft has done. (And this analogy is getting really tired of being trotted out for any company Redhat's size or larger.)
:)
First, Microsoft does not license their Windows technology to anyone. (Wince doesn't count.)
Sun licenses their technology to anyone that wants to pay the fees. In fact, Sun would be happy if they never had to do their own JVM implementations. They would be content to provide a reference implementation and compatability testing.
Microsoft charges for everything.
Sun gives JDK, JRE, etc. away for free... and has even made the JDK more free.
Microsoft does not provide a source for input to the evolution of their products.
Sun provides a Community Process to which anyone can become a member for a fee. Sure, not any old Joe can give his input, but would we really want a language developed by popular vote? I sure wouldn't.
Microsoft creates products to push their own defacto standards for API's and such.
Sun regularly publishes draft standards for Java extensions. Many of which are designed around third party implementations to be plugged in.
In conclusion, Sun controls the Java platform but not with the same stranglehold that Microsoft has on anything Microsoft. And this difference is significant.
If Sun suddenly decided to take Java in strange directions that the majority of the Java development community didn't agree with, Java would live on as another language. If that happens then I'll be the first one joining in on the Myva(?) project.
However, right now I think Sun is doing a fantastic job and I'm willing to give them some leeway.
Edu. sig-line: Choose rhymes with lose. Chose rhymes with goes. Loose rhymes with goose.
Comparing? THEN use THAN.
I set up a mailing list, got a group going, and we started to go into our design phase. We looked at the new features that were going to go into 1.2 and decided to wait for 1.2 to come out and the spec to settle down. We shelved the effort until that point.
We never started up again. The java spec went all over the place and I decided that I didn't like Java for one of the same reasons I don't like Microsoft -- I don't want to be a member of the API of the week club. I have better things to do with my time.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Sun has always been Microsoft II. I have always felt that the words coming out of McNealy's mouth have been quite disturbing for some time. He is not interested in destroying Microsoft, he is interested in taking Bill Gates' place. For what it's worth, RMS has been advocating people not use Java for quite some time. His fears are now being realized. I tend to agree with the assessment that unlike just about every other computer language on the planet - Java is the only one that is proprietary. Imagine the ruckus if C/C++ remained an AT&T commodity after years of promising to make it "free".
Sun scares me, it should scare you too.
It looks to me like Sun is looking for a standards body who will put their name behind Java, while letting Sun handle the actual "standardization" process. Unsuprisingly, they're not finding a body to do this.
So, who's left? I seem to recall they've already tried ISO, they've tried ECMA, and they're sure to get the same reception with the IETF.
This article (in german) tells us that "the head of technical commitee 41, Michael Wheatley (IBM), possibly wants to continue with the standardization of Java even without Sun's support.
So far, Sun's Java specs are explicitly open: you can use them to build your own compatible implementation (you just can't call it "Java"). And Sun's Java specs are detailed and quite complete. This is in stark contrast to the Win32 API specs, which are so poorly documented that for practical purposes, it's not possible to make a complete independent implementation.
However, dropping the standardization effort also is bad PR because it gives the impression that Sun is renegging on their commitments.
One point of concern is that Sun every now and then seems to make some fuzzy claims about intellectual property related to the Java APIs. No matter who drives the evolution of the Java platform (Sun or a standards body), those parts of the Java specs would clearly not be acceptable to most users of Java, and that is something users need clarity on up-front.
If Sun does make IP claims related to parts of the APIs (rather than their implementation), that would be a serious matter and would have to be identified up front. That is a point, I think, Sun needs to be pressed on so that we don't end up in a situation analogous to GIF/Unisys. Those APIs would likely be only a small part of the Java platform and easily replaced by alternative de-facto standards developed outside Sun.
I've been to many JavaOne conferences, and a few of the other presentations when this topic comes up. All kinds of people have their own little pet additions to Java. Multiple inheritence is one. Do people miss it? Sure. Do they need it? NO. I've been programming in Java professionally for four and half years now (since the day it went public). I've never ONCE run into a situation where I've been stopped by this. And you know what? The code is cleaner because of it. Say what you want, but multiple inheritence is just a huge mess for the next poor slob that has to maintain the code.
What's the point of that rant? Without Sun (and mainly Gosling and Guy Steel) holding the reigns on the Java up until this point, all kinds of confusing crapola would have been added to the language (just look at what Microsmurf tried to add), and it would have gone from a simple, elegant language to a huge mess.
I think Sun (specifically the team of people that keep an eye on what to add) has been doing a pretty darn good job so far. Without the people who knew from the beginning what the original intent of the language was, Java would have degenerated into a mismash of crap.
Java promised us a compile once, run anywhere solution, and for a few years, it looked like we would get it.
Well, we didn't; and we aren't going to out of java, not for a long time.
I think its time that we consider abandoning java, and starting up a new program. The real wonder of Java is, and should have remained, its virtual machine, and if Sun had developed a robust VM, and kept it seperate from the language, then developing for the VM would be just like developing for any other computer archetecture, and we could have used our languages of choice and cross-compiled to the VM.
In addition, an independant VM would have less security issues than a merged language/VM, and it would become easier to maintain the sandbox.
In conclusion, we need an OS VM, and you can write C, I will write C++, and my buddy will write Fortran and Assembler, and they will all run on it.
-Crutcher
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
A web applet language should be well integrated with HTML, not segregated into little square windows. Does anyone remember Curl? Not the web grabber, but the lispish thing with curly brackets at MIT. It was a brilliant idea. It replaced HTML, Java, Javascript, Flash, etc. with one quite adequate language. Unfortunately, nobody seems interested in replacing HTML.
A run-anywhere platform should not be tied to specially designed languages. You should be able to compile your C into bytecode that will run on any system. It wouldn't be a big deal to implement, many game emulators do a bigger job. You'd have to provide a low-level window library, but that's really no big deal (the insanity begins when you try to make a high-level window library, and anticipate everything the programmer might want to use).
Let's face it, Java went as far as it did on a huge marketing campaign, not on its technical merits. It didn't deliver on its promises, and those not caught up in the trendiness saw that it never could. Let's not waste any more time with it.