Two years ago Rod Smith (pictured), IBM Software's VP of Emerging Technologies (and still with IBM today), wrote an open letter to Rob Gingell, Sun's Chief Engineer (now with Cassatt). IBM, Smith said, 'would like to work with Sun on an independent project to open source Java.'
Here is the open letter in full:
"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 here.
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 toward 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.
About Jeremy Geelan Jeremy Geelan is Sr. Vice-President of SYS-CON Media & Events. He is Conference Chair of the AJAXWorld Conference & Expo series, of the 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo and founder of Web 2.0 Journal, AJAXWorld Magazine and other major SYS-CON titles. From 2000-6, as first editorial director and then group publisher of SYS-CON Media, he was responsible for the development of all new titles and i-Technology portals for the firm, and regularly represents SYS-CON at conferences and trade shows, speaking to technology audiences both in North America and overseas. He is executive producer and presenter of "Power Panels with Jeremy Geelan" on SYS-CON.TV.
NextSteps wrote: | 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.
I wonder how close this
is to being IBM's
continuing position
today? Maybe if Sun would
join Eclipse (and if IBM
would consent to renaming
it less aggressively!)
this would be the next
logical step...
El Galileo wrote: Vikky
looks like you are
thiking on the IBM
mainframe (S/390 or
zSeries)or you are
talking about Microsoft.
IBM has a lot of OSes,
like AIX, zOS (OS/390),
OS/400, the one that runs
on POS, OS/2 and for all
of their OSes they have
developed the JAVA JDK.
IBM is supporting the
Open Source Community and
Linux, of course that
they are looking for
profit with corporate
customers, but open
sourcing Java will
benefit all of us, not
only IBM.
Java has helped Corporate
customer to migrate from
a plataform to another
without major problems.
Java allows to don't have
dependecies on OS's
developers. Making Java
open source will mark it
as the best choice for a
development language on
the market.
Vikky wrote: I think
"Gang Guo" and "miko
matsumura " were right,
or atleast I believe
same. IBM definately
playing a political brain
game here with SUN. May
be its law of nature like
stronger eats weeker. So
it may happen. I heard
that roar long back like
"we have more people
working for java then
sun" cannot tell exact
detail where and when.
As a user of java I
don''t want to see
variation in behavior of
java implementation, or
multiple version of java.
But when IBM gets in
anywhere few thing
happens:
1. Things are
not free.
2. Documents not
available completely
3. So u need IBM support.
4. Every thing is flaky,
I consider e.g. WSAD as
flaky.
5. Confusive
behaviour of same version
of tool on same
platform.
6. Open source becomes
useless like eclipse, I
may like to
use textedit then
flaky eclipse.
Bottom line IBM suc...
miko matsumura wrote: The
implications of this
proposal are not unduly
radical in my opinion and
it is a much more
reasonable proposition
than it may sound at
first take. The open
source area would be just
the VM and language and
maybe a few core things.
This is predicated on the
idea that the system is
sufficiently stable that
freeing it would
*prevent* fragmentation
as opposed to promoting
fragmentation. This is a
reasonable supposition.
Rod Smith is a reasonable
and good guy.
As it happens, IBM would
gain great advantage if
this happened. IBM loves
open source because of
its revenue model and Sun
might lose some of the
Java shine if it did so.
The bottom line is that
there is a bit of a coded
message in this letter.
Sun Microsystems would
never respond to such a
letter by open sourcing
Java. This is because
political...
amsterdamvallon wrote:
The problem is the way
Java is being developed
and maintained as a
proprietary programming
language base.
There are two major Java
implementations currently
in use -- one by IBM, one
by Sun Microsystems. Both
of them may come without
charge, but are without
the freedom that would
make them qualify as Free
Software.
Therefore, all software
written in Java (even
software under a Free
Software license) running
on such a platform will
"put the user''s freedom
at risk" (a quote from
FSF/GNU people). It''s
like running Free
Software on Windows.
If you want more detailed
411 about the status of
Free Software versions of
Java, go here.[
gnu.org]
Devon wrote: This is
great news. Here is the
financial impetus to
finally convince Sun to
let us have an open
source version of Java.
This is a win-win
situation. The open
source community finally
gets what they want, and
Sun still keeps control
over the direction of
Java. Get ready for an
explosion of new Java
possibilities!
Layton wrote: For those
who wish we had our own
implementation of web
technologies to compete
with .net and java -- go
look at php and the
mozilla project. php can
do most of the server
side stuff that I have
seen or heard of being
done in java, and the
mozilla project has
quietly become a full
portable application
development environment
which happens to include
a lot of client side web
technologies.
We have what we need to
do it without java or
.net, but it demands that
the people who have
invested years learning
and developing java based
environments would have
to start over. An open
source java would mean
that, for example, all
the java work that the
apache foundation has
done will remain valid
for years to come
reguardless of what
should happen to Sun.
otherwise, all the stuff
they have done would have
to be scr...
Anonymous Coward wrote:
Its looks like another
heavy hand tactic from
IBM and MSFT behind it..
Why dont IBM ask MSFT to
open up .NET ? If you
want to something to
penetrate in to the
corporate world it needs
a leader and lot of
proponents. I bet if Sun
makes JAVA open source,
immediately MSFT will
start a marketing
campaign on bashing it ,
dont give that
opportunity to them.. I
will ask SUN to listen to
the community and make
changes rather then being
a hindrance and start
this whole topic of make
JAVA opensource. Java
zindabad !!
Gang Guo wrote: You get
jdk free for you to
use,and j2ee
implementation as well,
j2ee blue print etc, I
think this is fine
enough!
do not try to
involved into the
vendors' game, let them
play as long as you have
java to play for free!!!
I support sun, let him
control java,we all can
see sun push java a lot
for free; do not let ibm
messy it, like they tried
to do on swing, ibm is
just an other j2ee world
microsoft, he is trying
to kill all others, only
himself own everything,
have you get CICS open
source, have you got
WebSphere open source,
and also had IBM invited
Sun join WS-I before,
everybody knows this big
ugly Blue did what.
simply happy wrote: Wow!
I love IBM. I love RedHat
(who have tried it
before) and I love
OpenSource.
I think this is the
answer to Suns comment
at:
http://www.pcpro.co.u
k/news/news_story.php?id=
53646
Sun says: "Sun would
support an Open Source
version of Java, but it
need a lot of money and
time to do so."
And IBM says now: Ok, we
do it.
And I think, Sun _must_
assent to it, if they
don't want to seem
unreliable.
Sun have lamented, IBMs
position of the
eclipse-project.
Remember: Eclipse is
OpenSource - Jav isn't.
But Sun wanted, that
eclipse is completly
producer-neutral.
In this
point Sun have reached
his goal. IBM makes
eclipse to an open
community, where IBM have
no longer a special
position.
Now, its the other side
around. IBM says, that
Sun have a special
position in Java. And
they want that Java will
be OpenSou...
larry wrote: My biggest
issue in all this is
cross platform
compatibility. The
moment java stops being
cross platform capable it
is becomes useless.
It is all well and good
to do whatever you want
but then how will all
these java-esque
languages interoperate.
If you answer than by so
what this this is not a
useful discussion. There
are millions of java
development efforts that
rely on common libraries,
tools, etc.
Richard wrote: The
OpenSource crowd has
never been happy with the
lack of total freedom
presented by either Java
or .NET, and thus
campaign for the opening
of both systems. There
are opensource versions
of both Java and .NET in
heavy development, but
why are we bothering? Why
dont we just come up with
our own Java/.NET-like
language, which we
control, which is under
the BSDL and thus an Open
Standard? Why are we
constantly clamouring for
the owners of the systems
to give us a break, when
we could probably go off
on our own, create our
own language which is
jsut as good, allows ups
to stipulate our own
restrictions on the
usage, and best of all,
we are not beholden to
ANYONE because its ours
100%. While big business
sometimes claims to
innovate while masking
the fact it bought the
advancements in, there
has been little ...
Kaazing Corporation and
Sun Microsystems
announced an alliance to
deliver the scalable and
advanced real-time Web
2.0 platform. The
integration between
Kaazing's real-time Rich
Internet Application
(RIA) solution,
Enterprise Comet, and Sun
Microsystems' open source
Java EE applic
Virtualization Journal
now reaches more than
60,000 online readers
with monthly digital
editions and weekly
newsletters. The premier
issue of the magazine's
print edition, which
debuts on May 6, 2008, at
JavaOne in San Francisco,
as a media sponsor of
this event, will be
availabl
Sun's mule train has
finally pulled into
Indiana after three years
on the road. Indiana is
the Linux-friendly
Fedora-like OpenSolaris
project meant to move the
Solaris-shy Linux
community off Linux and
on to Solaris tempted by
Solaris widgetry like the
highly scalable,
rollback-e
At Java One this week Sun
has been selling its year
-old-but-still-upcoming -
and definitely
late-to-the-party - Adobe
AIR- and Microsoft
Silverlight-competitive
JavaFX Rich Client
environment as a
potential
revenue-generator capable
of putting ads on mobile
applications and JavaF
MySQL has backed off a
plan to charge for some
encryption and
compression backup
widgetry in the next
version of the database -
and, heavens, NOT OPEN
SOURCE THE STUFF, an idea
it trotted a few weeks
ago and predictably
caught hell for. Sun,
which bought MySQL for a
billion dolla
Conference in San
Francisco. Dvorak held
forth on a number of
topics, including the new
AMD/Intel lawsuit, the
viability of Java and
Sun, the value of (or
lack thereof) of
corporate PR, and whether
or not a new book about
Silicon Valley is really
worth reading.
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.gif)
Two years ago Rod Smith (pictured), IBM Software's VP of Emerging Technologies (and still with IBM today), wrote an open letter to Rob Gingell, Sun's Chief Engineer (now with Cassatt). IBM, Smith said, 'would like to work with Sun on an independent project to open source Java.' 
Kaazing Corporation and
Sun Microsystems
announced an alliance to
deliver the scalable and
advanced real-time Web
2.0 platform. The
integration between
Kaazing's real-time Rich
Internet Application
(RIA) solution,
Enterprise Comet, and Sun
Microsystems' open source
Java EE applic
Virtualization Journal
now reaches more than
60,000 online readers
with monthly digital
editions and weekly
newsletters. The premier
issue of the magazine's
print edition, which
debuts on May 6, 2008, at
JavaOne in San Francisco,
as a media sponsor of
this event, will be
availabl 
Sun's mule train has
finally pulled into
Indiana after three years
on the road. Indiana is
the Linux-friendly
Fedora-like OpenSolaris
project meant to move the
Solaris-shy Linux
community off Linux and
on to Solaris tempted by
Solaris widgetry like the
highly scalable,
rollback-e 
At Java One this week Sun
has been selling its year
-old-but-still-upcoming -
and definitely
late-to-the-party - Adobe
AIR- and Microsoft
Silverlight-competitive
JavaFX Rich Client
environment as a
potential
revenue-generator capable
of putting ads on mobile
applications and JavaF
MySQL has backed off a
plan to charge for some
encryption and
compression backup
widgetry in the next
version of the database -
and, heavens, NOT OPEN
SOURCE THE STUFF, an idea
it trotted a few weeks
ago and predictably
caught hell for. Sun,
which bought MySQL for a
billion dolla
