JavaOne, Community and Dumb Ideas - Software Development Times On The Web

JavaOne, Community and Dumb Ideas
By Allen Holub

August 1, 2004 — The underlying theme of the JavaOne conference has always been "community," and this year's conference was largely a failure because Sun has lost touch with the community that it created.

The underlying theme of the JavaOne conference has always been "community," and this year's conference was largely a failure because Sun has lost touch with the community that it created.

A lot of the exciting stuff in the Java community is happening outside the confines of Sun's restrictive Community Process. Take Hibernate, which I wrote about in the last issue ("Java Still Struggles With Persistence," July 15, page 37).

Hibernate exists because Sun's Java Community Process couldn't solve the persistence problem. The excitement in the Java community is in places like SourceForge (and Sun's java.net site), not in the large-corporation-dominated "community" process and the mostly bad technology that this process creates.

Rather than embracing the vibrant Java community, however, Sun is trying to force its vision of Java down everybody's throat.

The best example of this problem was the revenue model that Sun was touting in the general sessions: Hardware is just an enabling device for software. Pay enough for a software subscription, and the hardware can be free.

Scott McNealy trotted out the Infinium Labs' (www.infiniumlabs.com) gaming console as an example. Subscribe to Infinium's on-demand gaming service and it gives you the hardware. It's like a cable-TV company giving you a cable box.

Sun's other example was a 7-series BMW equipped with an iDrive system. A medium-sized LCD display on the dash, connected to a giant joystick-like knob, lets you control everything from the GPS and climate control to the radio. You'll eventually be able to download software, such as mapping or restaurant recommendations, into iDrive via the radio.

Sun quoted BMW as saying that a subscription price around US$250 per month is enough for it to just give you the car. (Interestingly, across the street in San Francisco was Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, where a highlight was the integration of the iPod into new BMW cars.)

Not to rain on Sun's parade, but there are some problems with this implementation. People I know who own iDrive-equipped BMWs hate the iDrive. Fiddling with a computer to change radio stations or cabin temperature is dangerous and distracting at highway speeds.

Why does BMW offer it? My guess is that it's actually cheaper to build a car in which a single knob controls everything. iDrive lowers production costs, but if BMW can convince you that it's cool, you'll pay extra for it. This "feature" benefits the manufacturer, not the consumer.

Let's apply this concept to the Java world.

Sun put onto eBay 12 copies of a subscription-based hardware/software package. By its own description, Sun was selling what's usually called a managed service. The box is preloaded with Solaris and the full Java suite, including Sun's new and improved version of NetBeans. Your subscription pays for all tech support and updates for three years.

As I write this column, there are a few hours left on the auction, but there's been almost no bidding activity since the auction began. The average bid for this "$9,000 value" was about $2,000-roughly the value of the hardware. That is, the bidders value Sun's software/support bundle at roughly zero dollars.

My take on the underwhelming response is that Sun is trying to dictate to me what my development and deployment environment should be, but I'm not interested in the package it's selling.

I asked Sun president Jonathan Schwartz if the company would configure and manage a box like the one I actually need: a Linux box preloaded with Eclipse, Subversion, ANT and JUnit, targeting a JBoss/Hibernate/Apache app server and MySQL or PostgreSQL as the back-end database. His short answer was "no." Sun will only manage systems that contain the approved party-line components, most of which are under Sun's control.

I won't change my development system so that Sun can manage it. Sun is trying to dictate technology decisions to the community. But that's not how a community works. Decisions in a real community are made collectively.

Sun's success is tied closely to that of Java, and Java's success is in the hands of the developers outside of Sun. The best thing Sun could do is embrace the technology coming out of the real Java community, and then build a business model around providing world-class support for the products that people are actually using. If developers are using Eclipse, then Sun should provide world-class support for Eclipse-not try to force NetBeans down our throats. Only by embracing the real Java community will Sun succeed.

EMAIL THIS ARTICLE

SEND FEEDBACK

MORE COLUMNS

SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

E-Newsletters:
  News on Mon/Thurs.
  Test & QA Report
  EclipseSource

SUBMIT

JOB BOARD

PDF & PRINT EDITION

* Requires Resource Account! LOGIN or SIGN UP

* Download Current Issue!
ISSUE 8/15/2008 PDF

* Need Back Issues?
DOWNLOAD HERE

Receive The Print Edition?
SUBSCRIBE HERE

EVENTS CALENDAR

Business of Software 2008
9/3/2008 to 9/4/2008
Boston
Red Gate Software

VSLive New York
9/7/2008 to 9/10/2008
New York City
1105 Media

Interop New York
9/15/2008 to 9/19/2008
New York
TechWeb

VMworld 2008
9/15/2008 to 9/18/2008
Las Vegas
VMware

Mobile Business Expo
9/16/2008 to 9/19/2008
New York City
TechWeb

MORE EVENTS

GET NOTIFIED!
About all of the latest Resources

SD TIMES 100

6th Annual SD Times 100

It's time once again to
recognize the organizations
or individuals that have
demonstrated leadership in
their markets.

HOME SITE MAP RSS CURRENT ISSUE BACK ISSUES SUBSCRIBER SERVICES ABOUT US CONTACT US BZ MEDIA