|
May
12
|
|
A couple of interesting moves in the world of server side Java this week deserve commenting on.
First is the announcement that Apache has kicked of a project to create an open source Java 2 SE run-time - Harmony. There is a lively debate on TSS and JavaLobby - Graham Hamilton has blogged his opinion Tim Bray his. On the forums there seems to be 3 camps - first (the smallest) insists that this is the greatest thing to happen, ever and marks the start of the the next stage in the human evolution. The second camp (approximately the same size as the third) wonders why Apache should bother - what problem are they trying to solve for us; the third camp wishes the Harmony project all the best in it's endeavours (but actually thinks - you have no chance, why waste your time). For the record, I'm in the third camp - this is a H U G E undertaking, will take many years and is very, very unlikely to to compete in time-to-market, performance and stabiity of implementations from Sun, IBM and BEA any time soon. Note, I didn't say never - just not any time soon; at least not without some major investment from a large backer with deep pockets (Novell, RedHat ?).
Talking of deep pockets, the second story this week is that IBM dipped into theirs and with a handful of pocket-change bought GlueCode - alledgedly for less than $100 million (my guess a lot less than $100 million). Gluecode, if you didn't know support an OSS stack including Apache Geronimo (App Server) and Pluto (Portal). So IBM now have a semi-respectible Open Source stack with which to take on JBoss Inc. and the likes without having to Open Source their own Websphere. This is all goodness for Java AFAIC and lends credibility to Sun's strategy of seeding the market with a free, entry-level application server - something we did many years ago and really opened up J2EE to whole new market segments. Marc Fleury isn't happy - he thinks IBM have a 1000-lb Gorilla foot with has name on it - and he's probably right; and I'm sure he'll still be boasting about how he made the mighty IBM blink right up until the moment the weight of IGS squeezes the last breath out of him and JBoss Inc.. Still knowing Fleury, he'll put up a decent fight and provide plenty of foot-in-mouth style entertainment along the way.
Marc Fleury also thinks that the IBM move will hurt Sun; I tried to follow his argument but couldn't really make the statements fit together; here's what he said :
Well, I got to hand it to IBM for craftiness because this is the most aggressive standards stance I have seen them take against Sun. If IBM controls volume distribution in middleware, Sun and the Java Community Process will go the way of the dinosaurs. I actually believe IBM has just forced Sun's hand.
Well, first IBM have to control volume distribution in middleware - which today they don't - Sun probably distributes more copies of our free J2EE 1.4 Application server in a month than IBM does in a year; not to mention J2SE, JWSDP and a host of other Sun technologies: JBoss and Apache, no doubt make similar claims. I fail to see how continuing to support J2EE (in it's OS form) could hurt the JCP - sure it's competition for Sun but that's nothing new - bring it on.
