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Thursday 26th February 2004
IBM Open Letter to Sun
| CBDI COMMENTARY
IBM and others have been calling on Sun to make Java open source for some time. But Sun is on the horns of a dilemma with Java. The bottom line is that Sun has failed to capitalize on its ownership of an important standard, by using it to achieve dominant market share. On one hand it ought to be making a commercial success to the benefit of its shareholders from the technology it has created, on the other it constantly appears to want to give it away in its ongoing battle against Microsoft. Yet curiously while using openness as a rod to beat Microsoft with, Sun has not been prepared to go the final step with Java and make it truly open. So McNealy and co are constantly on the defensive, explaining how Java is "practically" open, when the reality is very
different.
IBM indicates their concern that Sun's continuing "fence sitting act" is now acting as a brake on progress. Java is falling behind. We agree. Go take a look at our reports on the Microsoft platform, and their aggressive strategy to deliver a fully SOA enabled platform in Longhorn.
IBM knows it has a difficult job to keep up with Microsoft. Sun ought to be aware that they are falling way behind; but we are unsure whether they really understand this reality yet.
The issue is that Web Services and SOA have moved the goal posts for Java. The world is now a FEDERATED, OPEN world, and given that Microsoft technology WILL be used by most enterprises interoperability is more important than implementation standardization to them. Unfortunately Sun continues to deny this simple reality and constantly tries to emphasize Java technology as their response to the many Web Services initiatives.
What's required is an open initiative that is focused on an integrated SOA based Java standard that is at least equivalent to Longhorn. Our discussions with IBM architects and also our recent review of some IBM frameworks (report soon) show us IBM knows they MUST move forward if they are to (at least) keep up with the furious pace of technology advancement in this area. If Sun does not respond positively to the IBM
letter, we anticipate IBM will be looking very carefully at how they can initiate alternatives to Java that meet this need.
LINK:
CBDi Report - Service Oriented Platform Strategies | NEWS WITHOUT THE HYPE
Yesterday evening, the following email letter was sent to Rob Gingell at Sun from
Rod Smith, VP, Emerging Technologies, IBM Software Group.
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Hi Rob,
This is an open letter to Sun.
I read a February 5th article in which Simon Phipps was quoted on open source Java with quite a bit of interest.
If you don't have the article, it is available at
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1517697,00.asp
In the article, Simon asked "Why hasn't IBM given its implementation of Java to the open-source community?" I'm sure you recall the discussion we had over dinner in December around open sourcing Java. Simon's comment appears to be an offer to jointly work towards this common goal. IBM is a strong supporter of the open source community and we believe that a first class open source Java implementation would further enhance Java's position in the industry by spurring growth of new applications and encouraging new innovation in the Java platform.
Here is the offer: IBM would like to work with Sun on an independent project to open source Java. Sun's strong commitment to open source Java would speed the development of a first class and compatible open source Java implementation to the benefit of our customers and the industry. IBM is ready to provide technical resources and code for the open source Java implementation while Sun provides the open source community with Sun materials including Java specifications, tests and code. We are firmly convinced the open source community would rally around this effort and make substantial contributions as well.
This would be a very exciting step for IBM and Sun. I am convinced that the creation of an open source implementation of the Java environment would be of enormous importance to the developer community and our industry's collective customers. It would open a whole world of opportunity for new applications and growth of the Java community. In addition, this would accelerate the growth and adoption of technologies that are built on Java and are critical to our customers today, including Web services and Service Oriented Architecture.
Rod |
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