Page II: Sun tries to quell dissension among Java backers while fending off Microsoft.
Although Sun President Jonathan Schwartz has indicated that Sun is reluctant to make Java open-source software for fear of dividing the industry, the company's new head of software said Sun continues to actively work toward it.
"We are moving in that direction, but we have not decided how, when, or if," said John Loiacono, Sun's executive vice president of software. "No matter what we do on the licensing model, compatibility will be key criteria we will have to address. That's what the community is asking for."
The question of making Java open source, which has been most loudly endorsed by IBM, is the most prominent example of how differing interests of the Java community are increasingly bubbling to the surface. Over the past year, other major industry initiatives have been launched outside of the Java Community Process (JCP), the Sun-controlled forum for adding new features to Java software.
Last November, the leading Java server software vendors, IBM and BEA Systems, chose to bypass the JCP to bring new back-end Java features to market. BEA submitted software, including XMLBeans and its Beehive component development model, to open-source foundations because they said that development process is quicker and more flexible than the JCP.
Eclipse, an open-source foundation founded by IBM, has seen a huge increase in popularity among tools companies and Java programmers. Sun declined an invitation to join Eclipse and instead decided to redouble efforts in its own open-source development tools project, NetBeans.
Meanwhile, a group called the Java Tools Community, which includes Sun, Oracle, BEA, SAP and others, was formed to advocate for more work on tooling within the Java Community Process. IBM declined its invitation to join.
Advantage, Microsoft
These disjointed efforts around the advancement of Java underscore how Java vendors are increasingly choosing to go their own way without Sun's direct involvement, said Bill Whyman, an analyst at the Precursor Group. The Java standardisation process is democratic, but the lack of a cohesive approach to Java development benefits Microsoft, which is beefing up its .Net line of software to take on the back-end computing jobs dominated by Java.
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