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Sun is simply coat-tailingSun is simply coat-tailingPosted Aug 17, 2006 11:16 UTC (Thu) by fredrik (subscriber, #232)In reply to: Better late than never by dion Parent article: Coming soon: a free Java
My interpretation of Sun's real motivation not to open source java until now is the historic scepticism agains anything open source. Not from any technical perspecive, but from managers in big business organisations.
Move five or so years back in time, and anything labeled open source was still strugling with a credibility issue - again not for technical reasons, but for marketing and business aspects - among business management. At that thime there almost wasn't a single issue of lwn without the word FUD in it, remember? So, to get all those conserverative proprietary software development organisations on the Java train Sun argued that Java was credible because it was controlled by a standards friendly but strict managed and business aware corporation. Actually this argument has been made up until this spring if I remember correctly.
Anyway, over the last couple of years, this general open source scepticism has mostly vanished and instead the open source label provides credibility even among some of those previously so sceptical pointy haired bosses. Big blue, intel, motorola, nokia - you name it and it sure has a open source strategy, maybe not a public one, but it's there...
So, if you like, you could simply call Sun opportunists. When the wind blew against open source, they assured their customers that Sun would never allow Java to be "spoiled" that way. Now when the wind has turned, so has Sun's argument.
Admittedly, I have no hard proof for the above argument. Besides, Java is still a tool I use with pleasure every day at work, and even if I am right and Sun's motivations to some extent are murky, I still applaud the end result.
Fredrik Jonson
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Sun is simply coat-tailing Posted Aug 17, 2006 15:44 UTC (Thu) by tnoo (subscriber, #20427) [Link] > My interpretation of Sun's real motivation not to open source java> until now is the historic scepticism agains anything open source. Not > from any technical perspecive, but from managers in big business > organisations.
Remember who bought Staroffice and released it under the LGPL?
So maybe not releasing Java was intended to protect Sun's crown jewels?
Sun is simply coat-tailing Posted Aug 17, 2006 20:12 UTC (Thu) by fredrik (subscriber, #232) [Link] I'm not claiming that it was Sun that was skeptical against open source. Rather I'm arguing that Sun's problem was that they had to convince the more conservative parts of the business software organisations that Java would continue to be a serious endevour, credible enough to be a widely accepted programming environment. As opposed to some kind of akvard social experiment - which is how I believe top management in many business software organisations still perceived anything associated with open source only a couple of years ago.
Of course a lot has happened since then. Sun's experience with Openoffice.org could very well be one factor. The serious interest large business organisations has shown the Apache Harmony project could be another.
Basically, I think it was a matter of being confident that no big player was going to jump ship when Sun changed course.
Fredrik Jonson
Sun is simply coat-tailing Posted Aug 18, 2006 14:38 UTC (Fri) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link] Yeah, well, it's not the first time Sun suffers from split personality.
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