Sun's McNealy Jabs at Microsoft While Opening Up Java a Bit More

by Dan Burger

McNealy repeatedly drilled Microsoft for its proprietary ways and what Sun and others view as a strategy to rule application programming interfaces that determine how Web applications will work. McNealy's encouragement for Java developers to religiously perform compatibility testing, and his warning of an addiction to "free" developer tools, was a point blank shot at the Microsoft software stack of Windows, the middleware riding on top of it, and the Internet Explorer and Outlook clients.

"I want everyone in this room to be aware of the opportunity for very large proprietary monopolists to highjack APIs," McNealy said. "We have to be on guard. We have to test for compatibility. Make sure that when we're offered lots of developer support money and free developer tools--you know, that first hit of heroin that's free--that we don't go into an extension that is not open and standard with public IP."

Although Sun is one of the champions of open systems and is a frequent contributor to open-source projects that underpin the Unix and Linux markets, Sun has its own proprietary tendencies, particularly when it comes to Java. Sun has not let go of Java and made it a completely open standard, and has repeatedly insisted that it has not done this so it can protect the integrity of Java, which would be undermined by Microsoft and others if it were truly an open standard. But Sun has been changing its tune, ever so slowly. What were once huge legal issues involving licensing and confidentiality have been laid to rest, according to McNealy. Though the company once believed there was a great need to protect itself and to preserve Java, that strategy has changed slowly over the course of approximately two years, and lately with a newfound urgency. Java's success, Sun now realizes--and hopefully not too late--is deeply dependent on the degree of open-source support that it can generate.

The key way that Sun controls Java is through the Java Community Process, a quasi-open organization of Java developers and licensees who contribute to the process of evolving and changing Java, but only with Sun's permission. The JCP assists Sun in developing and revising Java technology specifications, reference implementations, and technology compatibility kits. Originally the JCP was totally controlled by Sun, but it has evolved into an organization with representatives from many different groups throughout the Java community.

Sharing the stage with McNealy was Jason Hunter, the Apache Software Foundation's representative to the JCP. Hunter, rather than McNealy, announced an agreement between Sun and the JCP that secures "the basic right to implement Java specifications in open source." Within this agreement, Sun pledged to use licenses that enable open-source, independent implementations for selected APIs for Java Virtual Machines that are designed for servers, desktops, and pervasive devices. Sun also said that all of the Java Specification Requests, or JSRs, which are the means by which the Java spec is altered by members of the JCP, will be moved to an open-source development and licensing scheme. While this is encouraging and will open up Java's evolution beyond the confines of the current licensees for Java--mostly big hardware and software vendors--to the wider world of millions of open-source programmers, make no mistake about it: Sun still can axe any API from, or include any API in, Java that it wants. Period.

McNealy's assessment of the JCP was understandably less critical of this issue--which many feel is still a sticking point--and said that the success of the JCP can be credited to a balance of openness and speed. He compared it to the painfully slow pace that is the trademark of most standards bodies, which he says move "at the speed of Congress." McNealy praised the JCP, saying, "We have gotten an amazing amount of work done--from JavaCard to J2EE--at speed, with compatibility, with openness, and with reference implementation."

"When we started Sun 20 years ago, there were hundreds of developer communities," McNealy said. "Every binary architecture had a developer community. Every microprocessor, operating system, networking system combination that you liked had some developer community. Asia had dozens, Europe had dozens, IBM had dozens--IBM still has dozens--but I digress." To Sun's credit, the developer and application world seems to be condensing around Java and Java-like technologies such as Microsoft's .NET. So Sun certainly has fostered this, and deserves credit for it. But McNealy, seeing the coming and crushing marketing wave from Microsoft, knows that the ultimate fate of Java is not in his hands but in those of the developer community.

"I need your help. Mankind needs your help to continue to evangelize this platform. This has to be done by word of mouth, through partnerships, and through your testimonials. I believe that the community aspects of mankind versus the other architecture," he said, sneering, obviously referring to Microsoft, "mean that mankind is going to win. We do not support closed APIs via a proprietary edict. That's the .NET model. That's not about community and about sharing, and I don't believe that wins in the long run."

In describing the Java alternative, McNealy cited benefits such as scalability, a lower cost of delivering technology, and the fact that it gives more companies a chance to be service providers. It also doesn't force companies to give up on its legacy databases and applications. It allows integration into a services-on-demand architecture.

McNealy was building up steam as he added, "With .NET--and I could go on and on about security and viruses--the most dangerous component is that Microsoft wants to be the service provider for .NET. In the Java model we will have choice. It's also here today. The J2EE equivalent for .NET is still on the drawing boards."

Like him or not, McNealy is a guy who will say what he thinks about his blood-and-guts competitors. There's a bit of a war going on, and he's a take no prisoners kind of guy. Near the end of his keynote address, he had this anecdote: "People say, 'Why haven't you retired yet?' And I say, 'I can't leave my kids to a world of Control-Alt-Delete. I can't leave my kids to MSN.'" Wall Street, Sun's troops, Java enthusiasts, and those who have little or no respect for Microsoft love this kind of talk. But it will be up to each individual application developer, working in the best interests of his company and himself, to back up this tough talk with continued market momentum and, hopefully, a truly open Java that is in the absolute control of the developer community.