>From: Stefano Mazzocchi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>In case you didn't notice, Sun might go out of business as soon as a >couple of years: if even Oracle says that bigiron is dead, Google and >yahoo run on huge though inexpensive clusters of pc clones, Dual G4 >machines are starting to beat the pants out of Sun boxes and run >unix.... where the hell is Sun going to earn its money from? Yes, it's the case for many high-end Unix systems, AIX, HPUX, Solaris suffer from the concurrence of cluster of low end system, thanks to IP routing/switching technology and it's ok for IP services, including all Web Services. But business processing is not just IP oriented, you've got DATABASES and BATCH processing which still need very powerfull hosts, there is still today many VMS and OS/390 systems around and they will be there for a pretty long time due to the quantity of in-house developpment on RPG, COBOL, PL1 running on these boxes. But you're true by saying that the number of high-end Unix servers may decrease. >yep, you guessed it right: Java. Exact >They dropped the ball for java on the desktop: sun management decided >that it will never happen: there will be no Java version of StarOffice. The alternative could came from initiative like Gnome and KDE, running on low cost Unix boxes running Linux or FreeBSD and using StarOffice and evolution products. >So they want to earn money on the other two sides: > > big -> enterprise (J2EE) > small -> embedded (J2ME) > >why? simple: these are the things that pay off and these are the things >that go along better with Sun core business: which is hardware >(both big >fat machines and silicon chips). For Sun chips and also for IBM Power architecture and Intel i32/i64... >Now: is Sun going to change this because Mr. Burtonator cries >on his own >mail list? yeah, sure. > >Unless he has a few 10 billion dollars to invest in Sun to >open up java. Kevin is rigth when he try to convince Sun to push Java on OpenSource, may be not all the JVM but why not important parts, like external APIs. Why not give to Jakarta James Project the javamail API as they do with Servlet and Jasper for Tomcat. May be because in both case there was OpenSource alternative like servlet compat hosted at euronet.nl and gnujsp for example. >Sun can't start selling JDK's, otherwise people will switch to .NET (or >OSS clones of it, see Ximian MONO), but it sure can stop improve on it >(after 1.4 is out) and give away for free *normal* java implementations >and sell better/faster/more-scalable JVMs (which is what M$ will be >doing with .NET) Yes, Sun can't sell JDK when IBM continue to provide them for free on major platform, and that may be the answer. Sun could provide better JVM for money but there is today some companies who do that also but I'm unsure these companies have great profits/loss ratio. And there is still projects like GnuCC Java which in that case will gain more interest and more developpers behind them. Question here, GnuCC for Java is hosted by Redhat which is an AOL target. And AOL is also a Sun ally so.... All in one, the current JDK 1.3 and to be announced JDK 1.4 may be suffisant for the next 10 years to come. Did future needs will require core JVM updates or just external APIs ? I'm sure we could all live with current JDK 1.3 and external API from ASF, Exolab, and all the OSS providers... >You can be sure Sun has a lot to learn from M$ on the >marketing-software >side of things. Sure and may be also have problem with US Department of Justice ;) >Yep, people, Java is turning into legacy for most corporations: they'd >rather spend some thousand dollars in new software (which will run on >sparc only, of course) than spend millions in retraining >people, porting >software to .NET and blah blah blah. No, and for example take a look at IBM. They converted all their developpers to Java using tools like Visual Age for Java and now Eclipse (www.eclipse.org). Do you think that IBM will drop all the investments to convert them back to C# and .NET ? Better IBM have Java on platform from i32 pc boxes to AIX, iSeries and up to OS/390, it's a standard for them and they won't let Java die. >Where does OSS stand? We have been *used* to make java solid. > >Now things are changed: they think they don't need us anymore because >Java is a commercial reality. That's the truth and you'd >better learn it >fast. > >My position: give me a solid (possibly GPL-ed) CLI implementation, a >Java2C# porting tool, a BSD-licensed library of .NET classes and >java-cloning classes and I say let's kiss java good bye. Not necessary, Java could live for many years even if Sun try to make us pay for it. Again IBM is the major SDK providers on platform like Windows, Linux and it's own systems. And there is also Kaffe which could be pushed by the community. And there is GnuCC for Java..... >Interesting enough, this is where Ximian is leading. > >Or we wait for another mozilla-like miracle. > >Anyway people: be ready to jump off the train, we are approaching the >cliff at full speed. We should be more carefull here, don't forget that many IT consultants are reading mailing list like this and could quickly recommand to their staffs and clients to forgot about Java and start C#, and for now the current C# implementation is just Microsoft. And in that case, the big looser won't be Apache or OpenSource community but just Sun which will loose quickly its last opportinity to stay on business... We should all be carefull in that affair, Microsoft is a master in that kind of destabilisation, and even if they put a CLI Version 1 in OpenSource which guaranty do you have to see them turn back latter to a Closed CLI Version 2 ???? 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