Una opinión sobre el valor de Java

En el curso de una discusión sobre Dart en Google+, Rafael Chaves da una interesante visión sobre Java:

"Java was not innovative at the time, and did kill many OO languages initiatives"

I am not sure Java killed other initiatives - I feel more like they were dead on arrival, at least from a market suitability PoV.

The non-technical aspects are just as important as technical merits. It does not matter how cool a language is, if it is not going to be supported by multiple vendors/platforms, if it evolves in a way that invalidates previous investments, if it is hard to learn for the average developer, if doesn't have proper support for a wide variety of application styles/domains, if is going to be hard to hire people. Getting that right is as critical as (or even more than) technical benefits.

Java got all those right, and that is why it succeeded. I don't think it is a lot about money. Sun could have poured twice as much money into it, but if they failed to recognize the importance of those aspects, it would have been a flop, or have limited success (see Microsoft .Net). But these days I wouldn't bet against similar success being attainable by an open source foundation with a strong community, without nearly the same level of financial backing, if they aimed for building for the mainstream and the long term like Sun did with Java.

As a developer, I want my investment in learning my next language to pay off for as long and across as many domains and technical architectures as possible. That is much more important than having the perfect feature set.

...y a propósito del valor de Dart, Angel "Java" López ha abierto una línea de discusión e información.

James Gosling renuncia a Oracle

Leído en InfoQ, y publicado en su blog en nueva dirección, James Gosling ya no pertenece a Oracle:

Time to move on...

Yes, indeed, the rumors are true: I resigned from Oracle a week ago (April 2nd). I apologize to everyone in St Petersburg who came to TechDays on Thursday expecting to hear from me. I really hated not being there. As to why I left, it's difficult to answer: just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good. The hardest part is no longer being with all the great people I've had the privilege to work with over the years. I don't know what I'm going to do next, other than take some time off before I start job hunting.

This is the new home of my blog. It contains all of my old blog entries from Sun: Sun's blogging policy gave bloggers rights to their own works. The few more recent blog entries that I did at blogs.sun.com were written under somewhat more strict policies :-)

Un nuevo signo de los cambios que Oracle implica para Java. Este no es un ecosistema adecuado para liderar un estándar. Se trata simplemente de negocios, y parece ser que Gosling no encuentra allí su lugar.

La imágen, en Wikipedia.

Java y su futuro

Advertencia escrita al pie de la mayoría de las páginas que refieren a Java, según los "viejos" enlaces de Sun:

"Oracle is reviewing the Sun product roadmap and will provide guidance to customers in accordance with Oracle's standard product communication policies. Any resulting features and timing of release of such features as determined by Oracle's review of roadmaps, are at the sole discretion of Oracle. All product roadmap information, whether communicated by Sun Microsystems or by Oracle, does not represent a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract."

En los últimos dos meses o algo más, he necesitado recurrir diariamente a consultas del API de Java, a su documentación, y a la descarga de algunos de sus productos. Y encuentro cambios no muy tranquilizadores en la estructuración de la información que tradicionalmente ofreció Sun para su Developers Network: por un lado, el estilo de los avisos de Oracle reservándose sus derechos; por otro, cambios en la organización de los materiales. El primer cambio sugiere que Oracle podría ser más restrictivo en la apertura de Java, al menos en cuanto a los servicios de promoción que solía tener Sun (educación, lecturas, disponibilidad de materiales). El segundo quizá sea más bien una cuestión de criterio en la construcción de un sitio para que sea usable, que parece que se está transformando en algo así como ¿para qué lo voy a hacer fácil si lo puedo hacer difícil?
¿Ha tratado de descargar un SDK de Java? La navegación puede derivar desde un inicio razonablemente claro hacia un cambio confuso de contenido de paquetes de descarga y versiones, bastante distinto del simple y claro que antes existía. Haga la prueba. No resultará sencillo volver a la misma página de la que ha partido: da la impresión que el sistema asume conocimiento de la navegación anterior, y las nuevas páginas varían el objetivo en función de esto. Los resultados obtenidos pueden ser desconcertantes. Oracle está desarrollando lo que es por ahora una capa intermedia que acompaña sus políticas para llegar luego a las páginas (al menos para el API) que previamente existían, estas sí, con la simpleza que Sun le había dado a la documentación. Sin embargo, temo que esto no va a quedar así, y progresivamente este nuevo estilo de navegación se extenderá a toda la documentación y descargas. Ya en algún nicho lo he encontrado así. Puede ser exasperante buscar material específico.
Esperemos que sea un problema de familiarización...

Una duda razonable sobre la campaña por MySql

Jan Wildeboer publica su posición acerca del petitorio iniciado por Monty Widenius, sobre el mantenimiento de la apertura de MySql:

I am quite sure that I will get a lot of angry flames for this post, but I am not going to sign the petition to “save MySQL”.

I strongly believe in community. In transparency. In openness. I hoped that the fight of Monty Widenius would be about exactly that – making sure MySQL becomes the Open Source database engine for the Free world. Making sure a vivid, creative, open community of users, developers gather around MySQL and make it better.

It seems however that this is not what the petition is about. Here some quotes that leave me with mixed feelings:

http://www.helpmysql.org/en/theissue/gplisnottheanswer

MySQL’s database server has traditionally been a product developed and maintained by a single company, not a community project depending on volunteers or on multiple vendors (like Linux).

Well – at least they don’t hide it. But the wording is misleading. It implies that an open source project is either run by a company or by volunteers. This is so wrong that I have a hard time not loosing my temper. Take a look at AMQP. It is a quite good ecosystem around a defined standard. With several implementations. Some of them Open Source, some not. Or take a look at the Linux kernel. Most of the contributions come from people who are actually paid to do this work. Some of the devleopers are employed by Red Hat, some by IBM, Novell, Intel etc.

A real Open Source project is about making something better for the good of all users. Not only for customers. And distributing the development across several companies reduces the risk for every participating entity. So the more the merrier.

However, for MySQL it seems the world is different:

Those who wanted to incorporate it into or enhance it with closed-source products without having to publish their entire derived work on GPL terms (which would practically preclude them from many commercial opportunities)

Let me tell you, this is not correct. Red Hat can pay its employees by generating revenue based on the GPL. I would say that Red Hat does quite well with that business model. Look at the stock price.

And if MySQL would be so succesfull with their dual licensing strategy, why did they sell themselves to SUN anyway?

There is a lesson hidden here: If you sell something, you don’t own it any longer. MySQL is now SUNs business. And if SUN decides to sell themselves to Oracle – it is their business. If the MySQL founders and fanboys don’t like this, they simply shouldn’t have sold MySQL to SUN in the first instance.

So we have two possible solutions here. My preferred solution: Oracle takes over SUN and puts MySQL under a single license, the GPL. It also declares all relevant “Intellectual Property” to be licensed Royalty Free up- and downstream.

Second best solution: The (former) MySQL people do what Open Source always offers: Fork. Let the best implementation win.

The current plan offfered in the petition however is based on exclusiveness, something that I refuse to accept. And that is why I personally will not sign the petition the way it is.

To all that quote me, let me repeat again: THIS IS MY PERSONAL OPINION.

Es razonable. Sin embargo, a mi criterio, la base de usuarios (y soportes) de MySql justifican asegurar garantías de continuidad para el producto. Quizá si el petitorio en curso no fuera adecuado, algún otro recurso debiera de todas formas emplearse. No dudo de todas formas que, si alguien balanceaba la posibilidad de usar MySql, debiera estudiar muy bien sus alternativas.

Campaña para mantener MySql vivo

Durante diciembre, Michael Widenius, creador o iniciador de MySql, ha lanzado una campaña con el propósito de rescatar la base de datos, que de ser sostenida por Sun, luego de la compra de ésta empresa por Oracle, ha pasado a una situación incómoda. El doce de diciembre, Widenius decía:

Oracle claims that it would take good care of MySQL but let's face the facts: Unlike ten years ago, when MySQL was mostly just used for the web, it has become very functional, scalable and credible. Now it's used in many of the world's largest companies and they use it for an increasing number of purposes. This not only scares but actually hurts Oracle every day. Oracle have to lower prices all the time to compete with MySQL when companies start new projects. Some companies even migrate existing projects from Oracle to MySQL to save money. Of course Oracle has a lot more features, but MySQL can already do a lot of things for which Oracle is often used and helps people save a lot of money. Over time MySQL can do to Oracle what the originally belittled Linux did to commercial Unix (roughly speaking).

So I just don't buy it that Oracle will be a good home for MySQL. A weak MySQL is worth about one billion dollars per year to Oracle, maybe more. A strong MySQL could never generate enough income for Oracle that they would want to cannibalize their real cash cow. I don't think any company has ever done anything like that. That's why the EC is skeptic and formalized its objections about a month ago.

Richard Stallman agrees that it's very important which company owns MySQL, that Oracle should not be allowed to buy it under present terms and that it can't just be taken care of by a community of volunteers. http://keionline.org/ec-mysql

Oracle has NOT promised (as far as I know and certainly not in a legally binding manner):

- To keep (all of) MySQL under an open source license.
- Not to add closed source parts, modules or required tools.
- To keep the code for MySQL enterprise edition and MySQL community edition the same.
- To not raise MySQL license or MySQL support prices.
- To release new MySQL versions in a regular and timely manner. (*)
- To continue with dual licensing and always provide affordable commercial licenses to MySQL to those who needs them (to storage vendors and application vendors) or provide MySQL under a more permissive license
- To develop MySQL as an Open Source project
- To actively work with the community
- Apply submitted patches in a timely manner
- To not discriminate patches that make MySQL compete more with Oracles other products
- To ensure that MySQL is improved also in manners that make it compete even more with Oracles' main offering.

From looking at how Oracle handled the InnoDB acquisition, I don't have high hopes that Oracle will do the above right if not required to do so:

For InnoDB:
- Bug fixes were done (but this was done under a contractual obligation)
- New features, like compression that was announced before acquisition, took 3 years to implement
- No time tables or insight into development
- The community where not allowed to participate in development
- Patches from users (like Google) that would have increased performance was not implemented/released until after Oracle announced it was acquiring Sun.
- Oracle started working on InnoDB+, a better 'closed source' version of InnoDB
- In the end Sun had to fork InnoDB, just to be able to improve performance.

It's true that development did continue, but this was more to be able to continue using InnoDB as a pressure on MySQL Ab.

Note that Oracle's development on the Linux kernel is not comparable with MySQL, because:
- Oracle is using Linux as the main platform for their primary database product (and thus a better Linux makes Oracles platform better)
- The GPL code in the kernel is not affecting what is running on top on it (because of an exception in Linux).

Because we don't have access to a database of MySQL customers and users the only way we can get the word out is to use the MySQL and Open Source community. I would never have resorted to this if Oracle had not broken the established rules in anticompetitive merger cases and try to influence the EC by actively mobilising the customers after the statement of objection was issued.

It's very critical to act upon this AS SOON AS POSSIBLE as EC, depending on what Oracle is doing, needs to make a decision around 2010-01-05. Because of the strict deadline, every email counts!

Debe recordarse que previamente Widenius y sus socios habían vendido su compañia y la base de datos a Sun, que se comprometía a mantener sus características. Si ya entonces la existencia de MySql dependía de que el modelo de negocios se mantuviera en los mismos términos (ver la justificación de Widenius), la adquisición de Sun por Oracle acercó más la base de datos a su extinción por inanición.
Así, ahora su solicitud aboga por que las autoridades europeas obliguen a Oracle a adoptar una solución que salvaguarde MySql.
Si usted de alguna manera participa en el uso de la base de datos, no estará de más que apoye la petición de aseguramiento de la persistencia de MySql.
La explicación: If Oracle buys MySQL as part of Sun, database customers will pay the bill.
La petición a firmar: Sign the Petition.
La historia de la compañía en Wikipedia, 1 y 2.

Finalmente, Oracle toma Sun

Seguramente la compra de Sun tendrá impacto profundo en el negocio informático, y lo veremos progresivamente. Dos comentarios hoy destacan el carácter de oferta vertical que ahora podría presentar Oracle. Ashlee Vance, en The New York Times ("Cash in Hand, Technology Giants Go Shopping"), y Tom Steinert-Threlkeld, en ZDNet ("A complete industry in a box"). Vance dice:

Most consumers do not want to get a PC by purchasing microprocessors, hard drives and operating system software from different suppliers and assembling them all into a working computer. They prefer to buy a complete, customized machine from one supplier.

Corporate customers increasingly want the same thing: a one-stop shop for hardware, software and services. And the largest technology companies are deploying their huge cash hoards to make acquisitions to bolster their ability to be that single provider.

That trend drove Oracle, a leader in business software, to announce Monday that it was spending $7.4 billion to buy an ailing Sun Microsystems and get into the computer hardware business. Oracle beat out rival I.B.M., which considered buying Sun to enhance its own software offerings but ended serious acquisition talks about two weeks ago.

“Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system — applications to disk — where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves,” Oracle’s chief executive, Lawrence J. Ellison, said Monday.

Vance no piensa en lo que le pase a MySql, ni el cambio de manos de Java, sino en la consolidación de agentes con control completo del negocio. Quizá sea su punto de vista el más acertado en todo lo que comienza a debatirse tras la compra. ¿Habrá cometido IBM un error histórico?

Un tercer aspecto de la (posible) venta de Sun

Eugene Ciurana, en un post en The Sever Side, agrega un factor más a las razones de la compra de Sun, ahora apuntando a su (eventual) estrategia futura para Java. Según especulaciones de Stephen Colebourne, Sun perseguiría retornar Java a un desarrollo propietario:

Stephen Colebourne argues that there will be no Java 7 because of the ongoing disagreements between the Apache Software Foundation, Sun, and the JCP regarding Apache Harmony, the independent, open source, compatible Java SDK.

Stephen argues that Harmony's success motivated Sun to return to a proprietary Java development model and is blocking Harmony from getting the JDK compatibility kits it needs for validating that its Java implementation is up to snuff.

[Según Stephen Colebourne] Apache's implementation of the Java SE 5 JSR specification is Apache Harmony. However, when Apache came to obtain the testing kit for the specification a whole political game started. Instead of Sun offering the testing kit as normal for each of the other 25 JSRs, they offered a testing kit where the results of the tested code would not be Open Source

Obviously, Apache couldn't accept this limitation, which is against the legal agreement signed between Sun and Apache. Apache complained 2 years ago, but has yet to receive an acceptable response. And no, there is no way a charity not-for-profit like Apache is going to sue a multi-national corporation - who do you think would get the better lawyers?

The key point is that Sun's tactics here were quite deliberate. They knew exactly what they were doing by offering a testing kit with a restrictive license. They wanted to ensure that Apache Harmony couldn't be certified as complete. Sun was going out of its way to ensure that there was no competition to its own JDK.

In the meantime, Sun played the OpenJDK card. It announced the release of the JDK under the GPL license [...] I think this shows a gross lack of perspective - the code may now be GPL open source, but the specification is now no longer open. Which is more important?

Thus, the next release will be JDK 7, not Java 7.

This means that there won't be an open Java 7 specification. This would mean that what makes it into Java is what Sun choses to release in OpenJDK, not what's agreed in the JSRs. This returns control of Java back to Sun and prevents its standardization.

Stephen made a second posting where he documents the ongoing discussions between the Apache Harmony and Sun regarding the Java 7 specifications, using the JCP Executive Committee meeting minutes to support his argument.
An interesting read, to say the least, and a potential threat to having an open Java specification.

¿Qué peso puede tener esta hipótesis? En este caso es simple: el tiempo le dará su lugar en pocos meses.

Una nueva versión sobre la (posible) venta de Sun

Gavin Clarke, en The Register, agrega otra faceta a la ronda por el futuro de Sun: la propuesta de compra de IBM habría bloqueado una compra de Sun por parte de Oracle y Hewlett-Packard, desmembrada en dos negocios: la cartera de software para Oracle, y el hardware para HP. El negocio representaba "más de 2000 millones de dólares". La oferta de IBM por más del doble habría congelado la operación:

Oracle and Hewlett-Packard are believed to have made a joint offer for Sun Microsystems in a deal totaling more than $2bn.
Under the deal, database giant Oracle would have taken Sun's software portfolio for $2bn, leaving HP with Sun's vast Solaris, Sparc, and x86 server products, manufacturing and distribution, and user base.
A potential deal between the three is understood to have been blocked by IBM, in the middle of talks to buy the whole of Sun for a reported $6.5bn.
Oracle, HP, and Sun declined to comment on what they called rumors, while IBM was unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.
A source, who didn't want to be identified, told The Reg that Oracle and HP had gone in to meet Sun to discuss the possible deal.
It's already been reported that Sun had been shopping itself around Silicon Valley, with HP named as a potential buyer.
This, though, is the first indication that HP had teamed with Larry Ellison's M&A beast Oracle - which has bought 50 companies in four years - to take only what they wanted from Sun. At $2bn, this would have been one of Oracle's large purchases, slotting behind PeopleSoft and BEA Systems.
Oracle and Sun parted ways on Java and on databases on Sparc a while back, partly thanks to Sun's $1bn purchase of the popular open-source database MySQL.
Of all Sun's software products, Oracle is likely to be most interested in owning this.

Lo que está claro, es lo oscuro del futuro de Sun. En épocas difíciles, las estrategias de negocios están bajo fuego.

La posible adquisición de SUN

James Gossiling opina sobre la eventual compra de Sun por IBM; recogido por Jason Stamper, en Computer Business Review:

Gosling insisted the rumoured acquisition is, “Obviously just speculation at this point.”

But asked about the different cultures within IBM and Sun, and in particular their developer staff, Gosling said: “There would definitely be a culture clash. We’re definitely weirder than they are.”

“We grew up from a bunch of hippies, almost with flowers in our hair,” said Gosling.

Although the firm was founded in 1982, its proposition, which involved the peddling of open systems in general and Unix in particular -- and more recently its transition into a major contributor to the open source software movement – has given it a certain hippy, perhaps even radical culture. Especially when compared to the more proprietary computing platforms that preceded it, IBM included.

But Gosling suggested that it would still be possible for Sun and IBM staff to settle their differences: “We’re a much more grown-up company now [than when Sun was founded] with a very different group of people. We’ve become a full-on enterprise software company,” he told CBR.

Asked whether it would be interesting to try and in some way combine some of Sun’s NetBeans open source development framework technology with IBM’s rival Eclipse project, Gosling said: “It would certainly be possible. We have been partners on the Java journey for quite a few years. In many ways there would not be a huge impact on Java development.”

But in a statement that perhaps has ramifications for IBM’s rumoured acquisition of Sun, Gosling – the inventor of Java – said that the Java community is now, “Such a large community of people that nobody could control it. If anybody tried, it would ruin it all.”

Desde hace tiempo, ambas empresas tienen más puntos en común que diferencias en su orientación a Open Source. Una eventual absorción probablemente favorecería la actividad en Eclipse. Y quizá por el lado de IBM ampliaría su soporte a Java, creciente sobre sus equipos de rango medio (ISeries). Sin embargo, una compra tiende más a ser la absorción y eliminación de un competidor en el mercado. Dana Gardner, en ZD Net, duda de su viabilidad y realidad:

By buying Sun IBM gains little other than some intellectual property and mySQL. IBM could have bought mySQL or open sourced DB2 or a subset of DB2 any time, if it wanted to go that route. IBM has basically already played its open source hand, which it did masterfully at just the right time. Sun, on the other hand, played (or forced) its open source hand poorly, and at the wrong time. What’s the value to Sun for having “gone open source”? Zip. Owning Java is not a business model, or not enough of one to help Sun meaningfully.

So, does IBM need chip architectures from Sun? Nope, has their own. Access to markets from Sun’s long-underperforming sales force? Nope. Unix? IBM has one. Linux? IBM was there first. Engineering skills? Nope. Storage technology? Nope. Head-start on cloud implementations? Nope. Java license access or synergy? Nope, too late. Sun’s deep and wide professional services presence worldwide? Nope. Ha!

Let’s see … hardware, software, technology, sales, cloud, labor, market reach … none makes sense for IBM to buy Sun — at any price. IBM does just fine by continuing to watch the sun set on Sun. Same for Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, HP.

With due respect to Larry Dignan on ZDNet, none of his reasons add up in dollars and cents. No way. Sun has fallen too far over the years for these rationales to stand up. UPDATE: Tony Baer likes Fujitsu as Sun savior.

Only in playing some offense via data center product consolidation against HP and Dell would buying Sun help IBM. And the math doesn’t add up there. The cost of getting Sun is more than the benefits of taking money from enterprise accounts from others. [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

Eric Newcomer pone el acento en la competencia por el liderazgo de la comunidad Java, y sí considera que existe interés de parte de IBM en la compra, particularmente si futuros desarrollos de Sun siguieran un camino distinto del que hoy otras empresas tienen embarcado:

The hot topic of debate today is the breaking news story that IBM is in talks to acquire Sun. Dana Gardner doubts this, and a bunch of myFB and Twitter friends ask the obvious questions in their status updates: Why the heck would IBM want to do this?

I haven’t seen anyone yet bring up the Java question. As co-chair of the OSGi EEG and formerly 9-year employee of a Java vendor, I have seen the battles between Sun and IBM over the control of the Java langauge up close. It has never been a pretty picture.

Recently I was asked about Jonathan Schwartz’s blog entries about Sun’s future direction and corporate strategy. The content of these entries has been subject to the usual praise and criticism, but I haven’t seen anyone talk about what’s so obviously and painfully missing - at least for someone active in the Java community and trying to push the ball forward (e.g. enterprise OSGi). Where is the talk about leading the Java community? Where is the talk about collaboration with IBM, Oracle, Progress, Tibco, and others? Where is the description of how helpful Sun is toward Apache’s Java projects (especially Harmony)?

IBM has ported many products onto the OSGi framework during the past several years, including flagship products such as WebSphere Application Server and Lotus Notes. Never mind the fragmentation in the Java community caused by the disagreement over SCA. What about Sun’s recent announcement that they were going to reinvent Java modularity in the Open JDK project, all on their own, without input, without regard to what happens to OSGi? What kind of potential change cost does that represent to IBM and all the other Java vendors who have ported products onto OSGi?

The potential acquisition of Sun has been debated so far mostly in terms of the business value Sun has - that is, in the context of where it is still making money, as if that were the main or only reason for an acquisition. But I say again, what about the unrealized potential for collaborative leadership in the Java community? Sun obviously isn’t paying attention to this, but IBM might be.

Para más información, la eventual compra, analizada por The Wall Street Journal.