Sun boss ponders how to open source Java

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 17 May 2006 18:00

Your IT - Home IT

The new CEO of Sun Jonathan Schwartz has once again committed the company making the last bastion of the company's uniqueness, its Java software development platform, an open source product. However, in his opening keynote speech at the annual JavaOne developer conference, Schwartz used the familiar excuse the company has had to date for not doing so. According to Schwartz, Sun is still pondering how to make Java open source.

Does this mean how can Sun make Java an open source development platform without losing license revenue? Or perhaps how can Sun turn Java over to the open source development community without the code fragmenting and diverging into different forks? Whatever the reason, it's reasonably obvious that Sun is frightened of loosening the binding strings on its intellectual property.

Former Meta Group senior research analyst, Dr Kevin McIsaac, says that for Sun it's not a revenue issue because he believes the company makes very little revenue from its Java licensees. Dr McIsaac, now with Australian-based research group IBRS, making Java open source would have little impact on the company's top line but would make it easier to include in open source distributions and, thus, more widely used.

"Sun has never broken out its Java revenue and I think the real value of Java to the company is that it's a widely respected development platform and therefore confers kudos on the company," says Dr McIsaac.

A long time detractor of Sun, Dr McIsaac, caused a stir in 2001 at a Sun conference, when he led a team of Meta Group analysts in delivering a report to founding CEO Scott McNealy titled 'Sun is the Next Digital Unless', which predicted a bleak future for the company because of the commoditisation of hardware.

In his address at the JavaOne conference, Schwartz, outlined new Java solutions and open source plans.

Schwartz highlighted Java Enterprise Edition 5.0, the latest update to the Java Enterprise Platform, Java technology interoperability developments across industry platforms, and the latest open source Java technologies designed to extend the reach of the development platform.

"Sun takes seriously its role as the steward of the Java community - a community that continues to evolve, bringing together now more than 1,000 companies and individuals, from open source advocates to automobile manufacturers," said Schwartz. "The Java platform's legendary compatibility and innovation are once again at the forefront of innovation, proof that the Java Community Process is a beacon for open standards and consumer choice."

Schwartz was joined on stage by technology industry leaders including Ed Zander, chairman and CEO of Motorola, to discuss the importance of Java in the multi-billion dollar mobility and wireless marketplace; Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical and the Ubuntu Linux project, to discuss new models for delivering Java development tools to free and open source developer communities; and Mark Fleury, CEO of Jboss to discuss moving the NetBeans community forward.

Representatives from vendors such as BEA, Oracle, IBM, Sybase, Red Hat, Jboss, Data Direct, Tmax and riodragon.com also joined Schwartz on stage to demonstrate support for the Java EE5 platform for Web services creation and deployment.

Sun also announced the availability and open sourcing of the Web Services Interoperability Technology (WSIT), enabling operability between Java Technology and the Microsoft .Net Framework. Additionally, the company introduced a new program for PC Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to distribute the Java Platform, Standard Edition, bringing simplified licensing, online support and co-marketing opportunities to businesses interested in shipping the current compatible Java technology on their systems with Microsoft Windows. Sun also introduced an enhancement to the Java SE license to make it easier to distribute with the GNU/Linux operating systems and OpenSolaris.