| Is Java's move to GPL too late? |
Nov. 13, 2006
Well, at long, long -- repeat after me -- long last, Sun has open-sourced Java. At first, Sun rejected the idea, but the company finally has come around to it. And, not only that, Sun's doing under the GPL.
Frankly, I think Sun finally did this because it had no choice in the matter. My only question, as someone who's followed Java closely at times, isn't "What took them so long?" It's: "Did Sun do it in time?"
Sun took its own sweet time about open-sourcing Java, because for the longest time Sun has been of two minds about open-sourcing anything. Sun's golden years were when it made billions from proprietary hardware, SPARC, and proprietary software -- first SunOS, and then Solaris.
It took the company a long time to finally realize that Windows and Linux on cheap x86 hardware were ripping its profits right out from underneath it. Sun would play at open-source and x86, but the company would then sabotage its own efforts.
For example, Sun spent 2 billion smackers on Cobalt Networks, a one-time leading Linux appliance builder that used AMD processors. Three years later, the Cobalt line was dead. In 2002, then Sun CEO Scott McNealy dressed up like Tux -- no I'm not making that up -- and proclaimed: "We love Linux." The next year, Sun president Jonathan Schwartz said that if Linux users were looking for protection from SCO's then hot and heavy attack on Linux, "If you use Linux on the server, even if we sold the distribution to you, you are on your own."
In the last year or two, Sun seems to be finally getting its head straight. The Unix company finally did release OpenSolaris. Better still, Sun has kept on supporting it instead of backing off. And, now, of course, we have open-source Java.
But, the question remains, has Sun made its move in time? OpenSolaris, while gaining some popularity, still lags far behind Linux. Had Sun open-sourced Solaris early on, chances are far more users would be running it.
Java, according to the TIOBE Software Programming Community index of language popularity, is the most popular language around. But, it's overall popularity has been declining for over two years now.
This decline isn't just a matter of hot, new dynamic languages, like Ruby on Rails, gaining adherents. Other languages, like the script-like PHP, Perl, and Python have also been chipping away at Java. Microsoft, of course, with C# and .NET, has long been trying to steal Java's developers away.
There's more than just that, though. Some analysts, while still sanguine about Java, the language, wonder if some of the most important systems built on Java, in particular JEE (Java Enterprise Edition), have already outlived their usefulness.
In an SD Times article, Richard Monson-Haefel, senior analyst at the Burton Group and a Java developer himself, declared that "Java EE [is] no longer a viable platform." For him, JEE has a too "complicated programming model" that gets in the way of developers getting their job done.
Open-sourcing Java may solve that exact problem. If the open-source community can clean up Java, turn it into a lean, mean, efficient language, then Java and Sun may both yet prosper.
By placing Java under the far more popular GPL, rather than its own CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License), Sun has ensured that the largest possible number of developers will at least give the newly freed Java a shot. Still, I'd feel a whole lot better about Java's chances for renewed success if Sun had made this move in 2004, rather than 2006.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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