AJAXWorld: How about Eclipse, will we see an Eclipse-based IDE at all?
Haynie: We’ve been actively working on our next product introduction, the Appcelerator RIA Developer, which is an Eclipse based IDE. The official launch of the Appcelerator RIA Developer will be in March, along with our revamped Appcelerator Developer Network. Developers can download the beta version of the Appcelerator RIA Developer now at http://updates.appcelerator.org.
We’re big fans of the Eclipse programming model and use it internally to build our own applications. Of course we also provide the Appcelerator Platform SDK for developers to use in Eclipse or the programming environment of their choice.
The Appcelerator RIA Developer is also in full compliance with our license agreement with Aptana – it’s actually “Powered by Aptana”, which we think is a great product as well.
AJAXWorld: You recently announced that Marc Fleury has joined your Advisory Board; what in particular drew you to him, and him to Appcelerator?
Haynie: Marc and I go way back, to my early days as a contributor and core developer on JBoss. He’s become a good friend and is genuinely excited about the space and the opportunity to help us solve many of the enterprise RIA development challenges that exist today.
Marc has a keen eye for emerging technologies that can solve big problems, and is clearly an asset to our team at this stage in our development. As a founding father of commercial open source, he’ll also be an asset in helping us refine our business model to sustain Appcelerator for the long-haul.
AJAXWorld: What’s yourtake on Mårten Mickos’schange of heart, suddenly opting to be acquired by Sun rather than take MySQL to an IPO as he’d otherwise planned?
Haynie: If anything, this move further validates the viability of open source as a business model. If any doubters remain around the impact open source will have on the future of software licensing, Sun’s acquisition certainly got their attention.
It was a smart move for Sun to reach out to MySQL. As the world’s largest widely-adopted open source database, this acquisition significantly enhances Sun’s competitive advantage in the marketplace.
AJAXWorld: You have gone on record as saying that Microsoft will convert and one day become the biggest advocate of open source in the entire industry. Can you unpack that prediction for us?
Haynie: Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to what Microsoft will actually do in the end, but its recent love affair with Yahoo is a clear indication of their commitment to embracing open source. Yahoo has long embraced open source movements, and has been a significant contributor to some of the most successful communities to date. If Microsoft is successful with its pursuit of Yahoo, it will further enhance its ability to move towards an open source, open model in the future.
Microsoft clearly sees Google and others as a direct threat to their model. Open source will help them retain their competitive advantage, breathe new life into their developer communities – their lifeblood, and help them more widely distribute and drive adoption for their products.
AJAXWorld: How about Adobe then? Appcelerator's technology competes with Flex-Flash...will Adobe also abandon closed source over time, do you think? Will Flex Data Services be open-sourced in response to Appcelerator?
Haynie: Adobe clearly has the right idea around Flex and Flash. We view their solutions in line competitively with ours in terms of enabling developers to create next-generation Web applications faster and easier. There’s no question that they have a head-start in the emerging RIA market – and think there are some significant application benefits delivered through the capabilities of their Flash player.
We can see how application requirements are being satisfied by the Flex-Flash combination, and some of our own components use Flash technology – such as the presentation of our charting widgets. We have more in common with Adobe than most would think – but vary greatly in our implementations in the market.
As we move forward, we’re interested in exploring ways to make our solution more appealing to Flex-Flash users, and vice versa.
AJAXWorld: Would you go as far as to say that the entire closed source model will eventually be gone for good?
Haynie: No. I think both models will be sustainable for the long-haul. I think you’ll see the greatest impact in areas where open source models can impact the mass of the market. For example, with Linux – not everyone can build an OS, but everyone can use an OS. That’s a great example of an area where open source can make a big dent – as we’ve seen with Linux and JBoss in that regard.
There are still a lot of cases where a proprietary model works great – and I’ve advised other companies against open source in some instances, where a proprietary solution would work better in terms of business model. Small, niche software solutions come to mind for this. There’s no need to open source an accounting software package – though I could make the argument either way.
AJAXWorld: Where do you go from here with Appcelerator?
Haynie: Our focus today is building the community. As you know, with any open source movement, the community makes all the difference. We’ve obviously assembled a team we believe can motivate a large community to be part of the movement, but we’ve got our work cut out for us. With the launch of our new Appcelerator Developer Network next month, you’ll start to see more around our commitment to building a better community dedicated to solving RIA and SOA application development and integration challenges – pulling from all areas of application development today.
We believe Appcelerator will be the first open source community to break down the walls between programming models and languages, creating an environment where all Internet technologies can be used interchangeably to build better applications in less time, with less code and with less cost.
About Jeremy Geelan Jeremy Geelan is Sr. Vice-President of SYS-CON Media & Events. He is Conference Chair of the AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo series, of the all-new Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, of the 4th International Virtualization Conference & Expo and founder of Web 2.0 Journal, AJAX & RIA Journal 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.
Wiil D Bates wrote: Why open source Java. Sun have taken an object oriented interpreted language handy for running gui''s in a browser and turned it into the the most interoperable middle ware platform currently available. Sun has an excellent reputation in the industry for working with other industry vendors to achieve interoperable standards and the JCP is a good example of this as are the JDBC, JNDI, JMS, EJB, JDO as so on API specifications. It is easy to panic and start blaming Sun as the Microsoft marketing machine gains its inevitable momentum. For my money Sun invented Java have worked with industry vendors to expand it. Most of those vendors like IBM have made a hell of lot more money from Java than Sun. So if Sun want to keep it, then it is their choice. OS is supposed to be about innovation. If the OS is unhappy with Java then maybe beef up Python. I can not imagine Linus whining about not being...
Vinay Soni wrote: Rick has described the situation very well. Here is my input:
Problem:
The problem with SUN is that they are traditionally a hardware company. This is a powerful new model for them however they are not sure where the money is going to come. This is the dicotomy of the situation. They are technically in control but the business model is absent.
SUN wants Java to be the next best thing to sliced bread. Thats why they have raised the baby. However, they need financial returns too. In none of the emails I notice any regard or concern for SUN''s investment or ROI in the minds of Java users.
Possible Solutions:
Here is some simplistic thinkig:
Are all individual Java developers willing to pay $10 US for the JDK they use?
Are all commercial Java developers willing to pay $20 US for the JDK and they use?
SUN could put a cap on these costs for next 10 years.
The JRE co...
ChiralSoftware wrote: There are reasons why Sun can't open-source Java. I imagine the big one is patents. All large companies like Sun have cross-licensing agreements with all the other large companies in the areas they work in. All of these companies have hundred or thousands of patents, and they all know that fighting over patents in court is not the way they want to spend their resources, so they cross-license. Sun's lawyers have probably said (correctly) that some aspects of Java may be protected by some of these patents. There is a lot of innovative computer science going on in Java: virtual machines, JIT compilers, the HotSpot optimizer, and many others. By licensing something under the GPL, the licensor also grants royalty-free patent use, which Sun can't necessarily do because of cross licensing. So it's a mess. I believe the same issue affected BeOS.
Similar issues apply to copyrights. I assume ther...
Spazmania wrote: Java's major consumer right now is large-scale contractors. Particularly government contractors. You know, the folks who care about CMM3 and similar such stuff. Those folks couldn't care less about open source or closed source. The only thing that worries them about Java is Sun's stock price -- an indicator that Sun may not be around much longer.
If Sun is missing the boat with those consumers, they're doing so in their failure to charge enough money for Java's use. These organizations have big budgets and could afford to pay Sun for Java if Sun could figure out how to ask.
Sun has a choice to make with Java: They can keep 99% of a small market or they can keep 20%-30% of a market that's 10 times larger or more. They seem to have chosen the former, and their stock price reflects this.
I have to disagree with ESR's letter on one point, though: The key problem with Java is not tha...
Ogerman wrote: The benefit to Sun of GPL'ing their Java implementation would be expansion of their market influence. Right now, there aren't very many open source Java apps (comparatively speaking). This would change rapidly if a complete JVM/JDK could be included legally with every Linux/BSD distribution. Complete adoption of Java by the Open Source community would mean a sharp rise in the popularity of the language and this would help Sun tremendously.
Keep in mind that if Sun GPL'ed their Java implementations, it would not mean a true loss of control. They would still own the Java and related trademarks. So even if somebody forked Sun's GPL code, it couldn't be called Java. And, in like manner, Sun would still control the specifications defining what "Java" is -- they would still have the right to certify what is and is not "Java". In reality, the situation would be no different than today, where...
Lysol wrote: Yah, honestly, I don't know how OS'ing Java would help.
While the JCP isn't as loose as developing the Linux kernel and other OS projects, it still has contributions from the major industry players - who have a vested interest to see Java go forward, not back - as well as small companies and individuals.
Proclaiming everything OS isn't necessairly the prize at the end of the day. If you look at MS's efforts to ECMAize .NET and C#, it still doesn't hold off the threat of patent infingement for Mono and dotGnu. MS can claim it's an open standard, but if the threat of litigation hangs over ones head, then it's probably safe to reason that developing a compatible version might not be a good thing to do.
I love Free and Open Source software. In fact, I make a decent living working on projects that use it. And most, if not all, of my projects use Java as well. Personally, I don't thin...
JavaCreator wrote: If you actually look at the Java Desktop you will see that Sun has actually added some significant design features to the open src. stack. The community will benefit from this work. It's also naive to assume that Sun won''t be adding additional features to the desktop and giving those back to the community as well... In addition Open Office is a fairly hefty piece of IP that Sun has delivered into the community. NetBeans is as well - there are companies that have picked up the NetBeans framework and have built products based on the code - just as Sun has done. Sun continues to contribute code back into the NetBeans community base. The JAX* RI's are other examples (as was NFS, but then I date myself...)
ragnar wrote: I think Sun has done many a good thing for the open source community (whatever that means). They gave Tomcat to the apache group and they also contribute programmers to the effort. After purchase StarOffice they made the source available from OpenOffice.org.
As for the issue of competing with the Jakarta group, I don''t see it that way. Struts "competes" with Tapestry and Turbine, other MVC frameworks already hosted within Jakarta. When you seek to hire people, you try to get the best talent you can afford.
jg21 wrote: I like Ross's final paragraph: "There's powerful magic in the Java platform, but we need more powerful resources than Sun alone can muster if this industry is ever to reach its full potential. I hope you'll join me in urging Sun to provide meaningful incentives to rally this industry into action and to create a cooperative industry alliance for Java platform marketing. Just as the dairy industry jointly funds the "Got Milk?" campaign, all of us in the Java industry need to work collectively to promote key messages that lay a foundation for consumer acceptance of Java and for our long term economic success."
Got Java? has a ring to it!!!
rbird76 wrote: If Sun is a 'friend of open source' then perhaps someone will explain being why Sun paid SCO $8M for a worthless SCO licence (along with Microsoft, themselves no friend of OS). Paying that money has essentially funded SCO's attempt to discredit and/or destroy OS (Linux) by charging users for "intellectual property" that SCO claims it owns. The money has funded the bottomless FUD/BS machine that is Darl McBride and cronies. Either Sun is a friend of open source and was extraordinarily naive or Sun was behaving as an enemy of OS in helping SCO to poke holes in the tires of Linux in order to preserve its Solaris business. Or somewhere in between.
If Sun's actions in the case of SCO are the behavior of a friend of OS, then either Sun is utterly clueless or their definition of "friend" is nonstandard.
kfg wrote: I think that Java and C# both have their genesis in commercial aspirations, rather than technical. They both are, and will continue to grow more so, odd, kludgy and crufty languages that blow with whatever trend is now fasionable, wholely for the benefit of their companies.
Personally I wouldn't hitch too many of my horses to either one of them.
That is what I think.
KFG
jdtanner wrote: I know Mono is quite a young language (if you exclude the work done on c#) but I think that Sun should be wary.
I moved from Java to Mono/c# recently and I don''t think I''ll be going back.
Don''t know what anyone else thinks?
dmeranda wrote: Just because Sun may be doing a good job, doesn''t mean that we can ignore the technicalities.
Stewardship is an important issue, a very important one actually. But there are still those sticky semi-legal points which can''t be completely ignored. In this respect RMS, and to a lesser extent ESR, both are our stewards of Free Software. Compare this to other important commercial "stewardships", such as Postscript and PDF as managed by Adobe. Those "standards" are completely under the control of Adobe, but aside from some recent DMCA nonsense, they''ve been very good stewards from a technical perspective. I mean compare Postscript with HP''s PCL...which one has served Open Source/Free Software better?
But I think the Free Software community should hold higher standards of Freedom to language technologies like Java, whereas we may be willing to give a little more slack to data formats...
B''Trey wrote: Sun is as much a hardware company as it is a software company.
Mandrake, Lindows, etc are new companies trying to start up with an open source model. I believe something like 75% of new restaurants go out of business in the first year. That doesn''t mean that the restaurant is an unsupportable business model. Not every company that trys to link its success to the open source business model is going to succeed. That doesn''t mean that none of them are going to succeed.
The question is, does going completely open source make sense for Sun? Since I''ve never founded or run a multi-million dollar business, my opinion is probably a bit suspect but it seems like it makes sense to me. In fact, it seems like Sun''s only hope is something along those lines. Their current course is simply going to continue them along their slow slide into obscurity.
tromey wrote: Speaking as someone who has spent a lot of time implementing Free Java:
It would be convenient if Sun released all their
source under a free or open license. That would
be a huge help, it would really speed things along.
It isn''t really necessary, however. The necessary
parts are much smaller.
First, access to the TCK would be very useful.
To my knowledge no free implementation has ever
been run against the TCK; Sun has not ever made
it available under terms acceptable to free
software developers. (E.g., requiring a Sun
license or otherwise making us give up our
"cleanroom" status is not acceptable.)
Second, allowing Free Java developers to participate
in the JCP would be nice. My understanding
is that there are still legal barriers making
this inadvisable.
Finally, it would be useful if Sun recognized
the reality of free software development,
namely that we...
herrvinny wrote: I thought Sun was pretty good about Java. I've been writing in Java for a long time now, and I like it a lot.
The only gripe I have is that a lot of systems don''t have the newer Java 2 VM (it's been out for a few years now, people, update your VM already). A lot of people are still operating with the older standard, so I have to keep the older JDK 1.1.8 development kit around. Sun, if you're reading, launch an ad blitz, educate the nontechnical to visit java.com and grab an updated VM. And make sure you hit some of the "neglected" computer users too, such as school districts. Perhaps press a few million CDs with the Java VM and offer to mail them for free, or reduced postage?
The Java of today is much better than the perceptions of many developers. Java is decently fast, the Swing packages offer a lot of flexibility, i/o support is terrific, etc.
Just one last plea: P...
barcodez wrote: I think Sun want to do the right thing - I think they think they are doing the right thing - they clearly have a way to go.
Here's an example.
JSF (Java Server Faces)
This is a MVC based framework used in presentation tiers in Java (mostly web based).
Now what Sun did was hire the project lead from Jakarta''s Structs to write the spec and an implementation of JSF.
JSF is a direct competitor to Structs! If a Jakarta was a company this would be an incredible agressive tactic. Hire the project lead and get him/her to develop a new more featureful version of his old product.
bstadil wrote: Eric was on The Linuxshow last night where his letter to Sun was discussed. The point of his open letter was a follow-up to Sun's comment that they were a "friend of Open source". There is no metric for what it takes to be a Friend and Eric wanted to put a stake in the ground for what this would entail.
The OpenSource / Torvalds creed of "Show me".
Please note that there is no accusations in Eric's letter. It would have been easy to include the SCO/ Sun tie but he refrained from doing so.
scar@@@progbits...com wrote: What is the problem? There is already implementations of Java that are OpenSource. All the specs are open, and allow for this.
Just because Sun doesn't want to open up their code itself doesn't mean that Java can't be open source.
Mono/C# are interesting, but I want to see C# in a couple years when Microsoft is looking for more ways to make money. All it will take is a little twist and Mono/C# will be a different implementation of C# than MS version. At that point, which one would be "Correct".
Microsoft tried this with Java. They failed because Java is held by Sun. Multiple OS's are what Sun wants for Java. They could have made a Java that ONLY worked on Solaris, but they didn't.
Again, I ask, what is the problem?
P.S. I am not a Sun Employee, I am an Open Source volunteer for OpenOffice.org.
dmeranda wrote: Sun should make Java free software, not open source. If they made if Free Software, rather than the weaker Open Source, then the defense-against-MS argument would be moot as well. Face it, it's not really so much about protecting Java against MS's "innovations" as it is Sun being control freaks and wanting to be the sole owner of what's becoming a very important community asset. So yes, open sourcing it makes no sense for Sun, but FREE-SOURCING it makes a lot of sense and is the right thing to do.
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What could be a problem with logging in SOA in the presence of such wonderful tools like log4j, Java’s logging library and similar? Why might we need something special for SOA and why aren’t existing techniques enough? The answer is simple and complex simultaneously – in SO...
What's the key to team and individual developer productivity in maintaining and extending a large application? Let’s start by making the following assertions: A developer's knowledge of an application code base is likely the single biggest factor of individual productivity. Cor...
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