Page IV: Sun tries to quell dissension among Java backers while fending off Microsoft.
Sun is intent on drawing more financial gain from its ownership of Java, which generates revenue from licensing fees. Java is also one of Sun's most valuable brands. The company chose to call its open-source PC software suite Java Desktop System, though it has very little Java in it, notes Rick Ross, a Java programmer and founder of the Java lobby, a Java developer Web site.
"At this stage, the executive view of Java within Sun is 'Let's figure out how we can do anything to bring us revenue.' That's not consistent with the position to provide meaningful community support," said Ross, who points out that contributions to Java come from many sources, including open-source developers and big vendors, notably IBM.
Sun has made changes to the Java Community Process to be more inclusive with open-source foundations and to speed up decision-making. Sun's Loiacono acknowledged that there have been complaints about Sun's handling of Java, but they've come mainly from competitors.
"Most of the complaints, if not all, have come from competitors who want to own things outright or have things freely available to them," he said. "I keep hearing from customers, 'Whatever you do, I don't want to see Java fragment.'"
Critics have complained that Sun hasn't done enough to accommodate and harness the collective energy of the open-source developer community.
In February, Michael Tiemann, the chief technology officer of Linux distributor Red Hat, called for greater collaboration between Linux developers and the Java industry. He said that the "open-source community has felt rejected by Java" and that the Java community is closed, going so far as to call it a "Java apartheid."
Bob Sutor, IBM's director of WebSphere infrastructure, said that Java should be a more popular development language to build Linux applications than it is right because the open source and Java communities have a common enemy: Microsoft.
"In terms of Java being used as a general programming language on Linux to do lots of different things all over the place, compared to C++, it just hasn't gotten there yet," Sutor said. He argued that an open-source implementation of Java that could be shipped with Linux distributions would make Java more popular in the open-source developer community.
On a technical level, some software executives contend that Java is not seeing the same amount of engineering investment that it did in the early days of its development. Instead of spending all their energy on building out the software "plumbing" Java provides for business applications, software companies are shifting their focus to features that demonstrate more business value.
"The reality is that Java is a foundation technology. Beyond that, we need to get technology around Java, such as management and Web services," BEA CEO Alfred Chuang said in May.
Still hot?
Sun's Loiacono dismisses the notion that Java is waning in importance. He notes that 12,000 to 15,000 programmers are planning to attend JavaOne this week and that there is a great deal of innovation around Java-specific technologies.
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