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You've Gotta Have Faith


By Allen Holub
May 15, 2004 — 
Maybe it's the full moon, but weirdness seems to be in the air.

The big news in the past few weeks is Microsoft's big-bucks settlement (and "collaboration agreement") with Sun, with everyone wondering what impact this agreement will have on Java. Rick Ross (of JavaLobby) spearheaded the hand-wringing with his article "Where Is Java in This Settlement?".

Rick has two main worries: First, Microsoft, which has a history of subsuming its "partners," will leverage its position to get control of (and destroy) Java as a platform. Second, since Sun is far from financially healthy (it posted a US$760 million loss last quarter), it won't put any of the Microsoft settlement money into Java, and the language will wither.

Meanwhile, the lunatic fringe (I know I'll get flamed for that one) put in its two cents in the guise of Richard Stallman's "Free But Shackled: The Java Trap"

Stallman is advocating that we abandon Java because it's not "free" (in the goodness-and-light sense). Our Java software is bound by Sun's licensing requirements since it requires Sun libraries (and practically speaking, a Sun JVM) to run. In other words, Sun is under attack by Microsoft, so we should abandon Java for a "free" alternative such as Perl, PSP or Python.

Sun's James Gosling responded to this attack in his Web log: "We have not sold our soul to the Dark Side. We haven't overnight turned into mindless lap dogs. We've had a lot of experience with Microsoft over the years, and it has made us very cautious...We're not a bunch of moronic secret subversive Microsoft lap dogs…Relax. Have a little faith." (today.java.net/jag)

So can we relax and place our faith in Sun?

Developers have to predict the future to write viable software. Systems that we're working on now will be released months (or years) from now when the world may well have changed. Technical choices that we make now affect the long-term viability of those projects. When we use existing technology, we're taking a risk that it won't be obsolete when the product is released.

At the other edge of the continuum, you're taking a risk in going with an untried technology in the hopes that the technology will be mainstream when the software is released.

Successful software companies balance these risks successfully.

In the case of Java, the early adopters' risk-taking paid off big-time. Sun has done an admirable (though not flawless) job of keeping Java viable.

Though many people have complained about the Java Community Process, it's worked better than any other standards bodies I've observed, and is vastly better than the chaotic free-for-all we call open source.

It pays to have strong entities (Sun and IBM) bringing order to the chaos into which Java would have degraded without that guidance. Democracy, as Plato noticed, doesn't always work out for the best.

Though Ross' concerns about Sun's long-term existence are real, it's unreal to think that Java will fail if Sun fails. Microsoft is in a much better position to succeed in the long term than Sun, which gets deeper and deeper in debt by the minute. Nonetheless, other companies, such as IBM, have too much invested in Java to risk their own success on Sun's. IBM would buy the company if it had to in order to prevent Java's failure.

Looking forward, Longhorn (the Windows XP successor, which is two to three years out) addresses the security and reliability problems of Windows in real ways.

Longhorn is not the usual Microsoft solve-a-technical-problem-with-PR hogwash, and many security professionals I know and respect are impressed by it.

So, here's a risk: Should we write off Microsoft because its servers are often referred to as garbage, or should we be early adapters of the next Microsoft operating system because it will take over the world? Should we stick with the comfortable technology (Java) and run the risk of being left behind?

C# is not really a viable programming language now, at least among the crowd I hang with, because the underlying operating system isn't viable, but that situation could easily change. Indeed, the world could change.

Stallman's "free" scripting languages are not suited for production-quality apps. You can't hire people to program in them. There aren't billions of books written about them. Their libraries are so-so.

The question, then, is how do you maintain the long-term viability of Java with Longhorn on the horizon? The only way to do that is to work with Microsoft.

Frankly, I'm encouraged to see Steve Ballmer and Scott McNealy acting like grown-ups for a change. Microsoft needs Java-there's too much server-side programming done in Java for them to ignore it. Java needs Microsoft-it's the largest platform for programs. In the long term, cooperation is the only way to keep both the language and the platform viable.

Now let's see if they can pull it off.


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