Open-Sourcing Java

"Every product at Sun will at some point be free or open sourced. Every one," said Jonathan Schwartz (pictured) in an interview given in November of last year, when he was still merely President and COO of Sun; exactly six months on, now that he is into his second week of being its CEO, what can possibly have changed?

Back then, Schwartz said:

"I think the concerns around whether Java should ship under a license deemed 'open' by OSI is separate and apart from "is the code to Java available?" Obviously the code to Java is available, just go take a peek at it. We have concerns on the desktop obviously about forking. Why? Just look back a few years and see what one of the biggest threats to the viability of Java was, it was Microsoft forking it."

and

"I'm thrilled to see more open source innovation. I'm thrilled to see open source implementations of Java. I think the jury's not back on how we will continue the future evolution of Java. We're obviously paying attention, we're aware of the issues, and maybe there's a new world emerging and maybe there's opportunity for change." [emphasis added]

Lest there be any doubt as to the meaning of any of those three statements, he re-iterated, towards the end of the interview:

"If you're really committed to interoperability and choice for consumers, you must deliver your code into the market place."

Now let us fast-forward to this week, when the Great Debate has re-erupted about whether Sun should or shouldn't open-source Java, as well as what "open" actually means (especially to Sun) in this context.

Here is what LinuxQuestions.org founder Jeremy Garcia had to say yesterday for example:

"Keep in mind ... to Sun, 'Open Sourcing' Java would almost certainly mean CDDL and not GPL. With Schwartz being one of the proponents of Open Sourcing Solaris, the chances for Java are probably greater than before, but there are still clearly some major debates going on within the company. Will the move benefit SUNW and the stockholders? With rumors of up to 30% layoffs, does the new CEO have more pressing issues on his plate? At a company the size of Sun, 10% of the workers are probably superfluous...but losing 30% would be devastating. He's not in an enviable position, that's for sure."

Garcia then makes a great point which bears repetition:

"One of the common cons I see for potentially Open Sourcing Java is that it will surely cause forks and confusion. There are already a bunch of forks around, and I don't see a lot of confusion there. So, will Sun reverse its long time thinking on the topic and go Open? If they do, will companies like IBM (who has a massive middleware investment in the language) jump in and participate with Sun?"

Finally, let us not forget that in the same interview quoted at the beginning of this article, the then President now CEO said, portentously:

"There's no such thing as Java in the sense that you have to look at a product, there's an ideal called 'Java'."

The whole of Javaland, both physically in San Francisco and the many tens of thousands more Java developers following it via the Internet, will be watching his first keynote as Sun's CEO at JavaOne to see where that ideal is going to be taken next by Sun.

Whereas McNealy, especially lately, was always held back by the JavaOne organizers at Sun to keep developers interested in staying right through till the final day (Friday) of JavaOne, it seems inevitable that Schwartz - unless he needs the extra time to get some final details in place - will take the stage not on Friday but on Tuesday, in the opening General Session.

You heard it here first.