Not a bash, just the facts

[Dalibor Topic]

Daniel Carrera <daniel.carrera <at> zmsl.com> writes:

> 
> Ewan Mac Mahon wrote:
> > There's something too what you say, but I think you're arguing against
> > yourself
> 
> That's possible. The advantage of arguing against myself is that either 
> way I'm right :)
> 
> Now seriously, I don't have my heart set on "Java must not be GPL", I'm 
> just trying to see it from Sun's POV. I /can/ be convinced that GPL Java 
> would be good for Sun.

I don't think a fully compatible GPLd Java implementation would be a good thing
for Sun, but it would be a good thing for Java users and developers. 

Sun has business interests of its own that are not necessarily always aligned
with the interests of others. See the regular comments of IBM and Intel on their
JSR votes about the need for more transparency and openness, like in
http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/results?id=3554 . 

Sun monetizes their investment in Java technology just like any other
proprietary software company: by selling restricted usage, modification and
redistribution licenses. Sun sells licenses for their Java-based products, the
RIs, the test suites, and sells support services. 

So, if you are a company selling hardware, services, or operating systems, where
marketing your product as "being" Java(TM), in some way or another means more
money, you have to pay (directly, or indirectly) Sun to get your trade-mark and
source code licenses. Depending on what you buy, you can get different sets of
limited rights, and various levels of support.

The real licensing money is being made (or going to be made) in the mobile
space, i.e. J2ME. There are many, many mobile devices out there, and there are
many mobile equipment manufacturers and carriers. It's a huge market, and Sun
has been drumming it up on the recent JavaOne conferences. As Java has been
designed for the sort of limited devices, it has been pretty successful on them,
once such devices actually started to become popular and powerful enough.

Over time, J2ME devices are becoming increasingly performant, in particular as
phones gradually morph into a PDA/MP3/video/gaming/browsing device that let you
do those old fashioned phone calls, too, if you really have to. The average
mobile phone today is probably more powerful that the PCs Java 1.0 was running
on ten years ago.

That means that the need for a subset of Java like J2ME will, sooner rather than
later, be outgrown by the performance reserves of the actual devices. I would
expect Sun to encourage manufacturers to move to J2SE then, or to move pieces of
J2SE into J2ME. Graham Hamilton, Sun's VP of Java, has talked about that in
interviews [1], and others at Sun's Java division have posted about the need for
convergence as well [2].

And that's where the problem with a GPLd Java lies for Sun: if Sun's code was
GPLd, the revenue stream coming from licensing limited usage and redistribution
rights to mobile device manufacturers and other companies could dry up, unless
Sun managed to provide compelling reasons for those customers to buy Sun's
added-value version, over porting the GPLd one to their phones.

So, in order to protect their business interests, Sun won't hand over the keys
to the 'crown jewels' to 'aid' their 'enemies'[3]. Sun has no business interest
in losing their special position that enables them to profit from Java
technology licensing.

Note that Sun is a huge company, that has different market pull in different
spaces, and accordingly pursues different strategies to make money. The Sun
division that rightly pushes ODF forward as an open standard, needs a strong
open standard in opposition to the ubiquitious closed pseudo-standard set by
Microsoft's proprietary Office tools. Without a strong open standard, Sun can't
compete in that space. Open standards benefit the little guy, and compared to
Microsoft, everyone is a little guy in the office software market.

The Sun division that runs Java, operates from a position of strength, though,
as it owns the currently most popular proprietary managed code runtime.
Accordingly, there is little need for Sun to make Java more open than it already
is, as the current way J2SE is ran works very well for them, and most
importantly, continues to bring in licensing revenue to Sun.

Regarding Java, Sun's needs and the needs of the free software community are
opposed, so we are writing better, faster, compatible[4], free software
implementations of the core class libraries[5], and runtimes[6] to fix the
proprietary Java lock-in, and liberate free software applications like
OpenOffice.org, Eclipse, JOnAS, Azureus, WorldWind2D[7], and many more.

cheers,
dalibor topic

[1] http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Interviews/hamilton_qa2.html
[2] http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/joe?entry=the_three_versions_of_java#comments
[3] Who those 'enemies' are, changes every little while as Sun's business
interests change. Microsoft, for example, is a major sponsor of Sun's JavaOne
conference these days, but used to be presented as a sworn enemy of everything
Java until April 2004.
[4] http://sourceware.org/mauve/
[5] http://www.classpath.org
[6] http://gcc.gnu.org/java/
[7] http://gnu.wildebeest.org/diary/index.php?p=156