Philip Brittan's Blog

The Battle Over Java

Is the cold war between Sun and IBM over Java heating up?

I often rant about the epic battle that is brewing between Java and .NET. But there is another battle, not necessarily less significant, that has long been brewing within the Java camp. It is a battle between Sun and IBM over the control of Java. Although the two have long been fierce competitors in the area of systems, the struggle over Java has so far been largely a cold war, veiled under a veneer of cooperation.

But recent moves have brought the battle more into the open. Since Sun decided to make Java an �open standard� and turn its stewardship over to the JCP, Sun gave up a certain level of control over Java. But it still retains sole rights to the name and gets to decide what is called Java and what is not (this is the same leverage that Linus Torvalds holds over Linux). Earlier this year, Sun made the decision to become more aggressive about exerting that right by renaming its core product stacks the "Java Enterprise System" and the "Java Desktop System", even for components that have little or nothing to do with Java. This move angered a number of Java partners, but Sun undoubtedly hopes that it will more strongly tie the identity of Java to Sun.

The other open battle is in the area of Java tools. IBM and Sun each push toolsets that are built on open source foundations -- Eclipse for IBM and NetBeans for Sun. There was talk about Sun joining the Eclipse consortium, but now Sun has made it clear that it will rather support NetBeans to the bitter end, and is instead arguing for a standard to improve interoperability between tools from different vendors, a proposal that IBM has rebuffed. Aligned with each of these tools is a separate GUI toolkit -- Swing for Sun/NetBeans, SWT for IBM/Eclipse. The passions surrounding this schism run deep. At a recent conference, I witnessed Swing developers vociferously laying into IBM execs about IBM's insistence on building Eclipse with SWT, even though Eclipse can build Swing applications.

The battle between Sun and IBM certainly predates Java, and even today it ranges beyond Java. Web services and support for Linux are two other areas in which the two systems companies have been engaged in open and behind-the-scenes tussling.

For us who develop in Java, the critical issue is what bearing this battle will have on the future of Java and whether it will weaken Java in the face of an onslaught from Microsoft .NET. Java is a grand experiment. Is it possible that many independent vendors, who normally compete with one another, can come together and work for the betterment of something as complex and with as many facets as Java? The answer to that may be key to whether the larger grand experiment of open standards for software will prevail.

Comments

• Hm... When big corporations compete, the winner is consumer. Having choice � either swing or swt - benefits java developers who can select the platform, which suits the needs of the application. It is different with standards such as web services, I agree with you. Still, we should have some positive outcome from the struggle between two giants. Recently Netbeans team started actively listens to the users� suggestions, what might have not been the case had Eclipse not been luring developers

  Posted by: krage on December 08, 2003 at 08:48 PM

• Stewardship and Control "Since Sun decided to make Java an 'open standard' and turn its stewardship over to the JCP, Sun gave up a certain level of control over Java. But it still retains sole rights to the name and gets to decide what is called Java and what is not[.]" With Sun retaining final say over what happens to Java, I don't see this as turning stewardship over to anybody. Rather, it seems that Sun has managed to get the best and brightest to devote time and energy into improving what is, ultimately, Sun's proprietary langauge. Now, this may not be a bad thing; such improvements benefit all involved. But unless Java is turned over to ISO or ECMA or some other actual standards body, then refering to Java as "open" or a "standard" is mostly marketing.

  Posted by: jamesbritt on December 09, 2003 at 09:24 AM

• remember the bigger goal Competition is usually pretty good for anything because it helps evolution. But there are two major battles occuring in the computing world. The primary battle must be helping to make sure that Microsoft doesn't dominate every single computer platform. SWT/Swing/Flash integration options are all good but there has to be a serious committment from the major Java players that Java wins first against competing MS technologies and Java competitors second.

  Posted by: mwilcox on December 09, 2003 at 11:05 PM

• The beginning of the end of Java as we know it? David Berlind has a great article on this subject on ZDNet: http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/the_beginning_of_the_end_of_Java.html

  Posted by: pbrittan on December 23, 2003 at 06:22 AM

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