Friday November 05, 2004

JDS at Sun

I really found this article about the Java Desktop System interesting. A few months ago I had a very vague idea about what exactly JDS was. It is not an Operating System. It is not Gnome. The best (not very good) analogy I could come up with was that it is a paper bag full of components for a new Sun desktop. As I helped do the change acceptance work for Java Desktop System over the past three months I have gotten a better handle on what exactly JDS is. The article above helped coalesce my thoughts.

I have found that the more I learn the more I forget what it was like not to know. The problem is that I bet I am not the only person at Sun who is still struggling with exactly what Java Desktop System is, and why it is important. For a lot of people I bet the vision is intuitively obvious and its very hard to imagine that someone might not get it! But for me I'm still working on getting there.

To quote the article above " Java Desktop System is the very best, most complete, and thoroughly integrated GNU/Linux distribution on the market." It is a fully integrated set of open source components that is targeted for the enterprise market.

Based on that definition, here is my latest stab at an understanding of JDS (using a few words from the above article) and its future.

As Java Desktop System infiltrates the enterprise desktops of the world it neutralizes the power of any single O/S platform to dominate the way Windows has dominated in the past. We know that right now Java Desktop System provides productivity, usability, stability, and operational/TCO benefits to a limited market of which Sun is not typical. But we believe that the combination of the Open source developer community and Sun's ability to support the enterprise will in the long run produce a product that appeals to a broader and broader market base. So we want to have everyone running JDS everywhere in anticipation of the stellar product we believe it will become. We can help make it even stronger.

Some feedback I received today " JDS+Solaris+Opteron make a killer software development environment. Add in Trusted Solaris features and it addresses the DOD/spook market. Or add in the integrated identity services and it becomes an excellent solution for certain vertical markets. " makes me think that my understanding is still pretty darn shallow and may in fact miss the mark but I am enjoying the dialogue and I think I will get there eventually