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> Apple's Java engineers feel that the current work being done by Microsoft is not competitive in performance with what Apple has just released. We are very exc

> Apple's Java engineers feel that the current work being done by Microsoft is not competitive in performance with what Apple has just released. We are very excited to work with the Microsoft Windows Java team two major consumer OS providers working on Java. Java is still big today. it make you wonder how Sun Microsystems with technologies like Java, SPARC, Solaris, MySql...etc. can run so bad that it got bought out by Oracle.

klodolph 4y ago
MySQL was an acquisition. Sun’s basic playbook was to give everyone nice, cheap software and sell them the pizza boxes. This almost worked great during the dot-com boom. And then we got Linux running on commodity PCs for servers, and people were using Windows on commodity PCs for workstations. In hindsight, they lost. I don’t know we can blame them for losing. It didn’t seem like they made clearly bad business decisions (Commodore) ignored new markets (Blockbuster) or got kind of run into the ground (Yahoo).
- josefx 4y ago
  With Java their playbook was to sell licenses for the embedded world and that only caused problems for everyone involved. Some Linux Distros ended up actively sabotaging Java with GCJ because of FREEDOM(TM). Various companies where blocking the community process to force a license change. Google ended up stitching together its own mostly incompatible Java but not implementation. Even the move to OpenJDK was used as basis of fear mongering when the licensing of the proprietary JDK was updated.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    > Distros ended up actively sabotaging Java with GCJ because of FREEDOM(TM). For many years, Sun refused to provide the TCK to certify Apache Harmony as an official Java (donated to Apache by Sun's erstwhile foe, IBM[1]). Sun's official version of Java was nor open source then,so Linux distros had limited options for open-source Java compilers, and their actions cannot be justifiably called sabotage. Incidentally, Android tooling was initially based on Apache Harmony. 1. Many years later, I read an angry missive by someone at Sun who alleged that Eclipse (the IDE) was maliciously named by IBM. I never would have guessed it, but Sun/IBM were frenemies then.
    - josefx 4y ago
      > For many years, Sun refused to provide the TCK to certify Apache Harmony as an official Java (donated to Apache by Sun's erstwhile foe, IBM[1]). Are you implying that GCJ was any more certified than Harmony? Because I would be surprised if it was, quite sure the TCK license was only opened up a bit when it became necessary to allow verification of OpenJDK derived implementations. > had limited options for open-source Java compilers As in none. They didn't have any options. So they fell back to GCJ, which could have been viable with significant time and effort. Instead it was still missing significant functionality even after OpenJDK was released, at which point it was too late. I just realized how short the time between GCJ being able to run eclipse (2004) and being obsoleted by OpenJDK (2007) was, I somehow managed to set up enough new systems in that time frame to remember starting eclipse and realizing it was running on top of gcj as significant annoyance.
      - sangnoir 4y ago
        > Are you implying that GCJ was any more certified than Harmony? No I am not. I am, however implying GCJ was as uncertified as Harmony, meaning they were seen as somewhat equals, despite Harmony's superiority (IMO). The situation would have been very different if Harmony had been officially blessed as Java, but I understand Sun's reluctance in cutting off its own revenue stream > As in none. GCJ and Harmony were the most well known Free/open source Java (the language) compilers, and were the choices available to distros that do not promote proprietary software. These, as you stated, were not Sun-certified Java™ due to the TCK situation - but they could compile java projects well enough.
- Maursault 4y ago
  In the 1990's, Sun changed from an engineering-driven company to a marketing-driven company. When marketing takes over a company and starts to monkey with the product, that is the beginning of the end.
  - xtracto 4y ago
    I don´t know... I remember some of the great 80s/90s Workstation companies: - DEC - Sillicon Graphics - Sun And they were all overtaken by cheap PCs becoming more powerful and Linux OS becoming stronger
- Bluecobra 4y ago
  In my experience Solaris x86 ran great and stable on commodity hardware. AFAIK they didn’t make Solaris free until version 10 came out in 2005, which may have been too late. Or maybe nobody knew x86 Solaris was even a thing :/
pjmlp 4y ago
Technology first, business second. Also to note Oracle was the only company that actually bothered to make a proper acquisition offer, everyone else was getting ready to watch it crash and burn.
Lammy 4y ago
To be fair, success of MSJVM wouldn’t have necessarily meant success for Sun. They made it as far as “Extend” and there was a whole lawsuit about it, culminating around the time Windows XP SP1 was re-released as SP1a minus the MSJVM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine

klodolph 4y ago

MySQL was an acquisition. Sun’s basic playbook was to give everyone nice, cheap software and sell them the pizza boxes. This almost worked great during the dot-com boom. And then we got Linux running on commodity PCs for servers, and people were using Windows on commodity PCs for workstations. In hindsight, they lost. I don’t know we can blame them for losing. It didn’t seem like they made clearly bad business decisions (Commodore) ignored new markets (Blockbuster) or got kind of run into the ground (Yahoo).

josefx 4y ago
With Java their playbook was to sell licenses for the embedded world and that only caused problems for everyone involved. Some Linux Distros ended up actively sabotaging Java with GCJ because of FREEDOM(TM). Various companies where blocking the community process to force a license change. Google ended up stitching together its own mostly incompatible Java but not implementation. Even the move to OpenJDK was used as basis of fear mongering when the licensing of the proprietary JDK was updated.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  > Distros ended up actively sabotaging Java with GCJ because of FREEDOM(TM). For many years, Sun refused to provide the TCK to certify Apache Harmony as an official Java (donated to Apache by Sun's erstwhile foe, IBM[1]). Sun's official version of Java was nor open source then,so Linux distros had limited options for open-source Java compilers, and their actions cannot be justifiably called sabotage. Incidentally, Android tooling was initially based on Apache Harmony. 1. Many years later, I read an angry missive by someone at Sun who alleged that Eclipse (the IDE) was maliciously named by IBM. I never would have guessed it, but Sun/IBM were frenemies then.
  - josefx 4y ago
    > For many years, Sun refused to provide the TCK to certify Apache Harmony as an official Java (donated to Apache by Sun's erstwhile foe, IBM[1]). Are you implying that GCJ was any more certified than Harmony? Because I would be surprised if it was, quite sure the TCK license was only opened up a bit when it became necessary to allow verification of OpenJDK derived implementations. > had limited options for open-source Java compilers As in none. They didn't have any options. So they fell back to GCJ, which could have been viable with significant time and effort. Instead it was still missing significant functionality even after OpenJDK was released, at which point it was too late. I just realized how short the time between GCJ being able to run eclipse (2004) and being obsoleted by OpenJDK (2007) was, I somehow managed to set up enough new systems in that time frame to remember starting eclipse and realizing it was running on top of gcj as significant annoyance.
    - sangnoir 4y ago
      > Are you implying that GCJ was any more certified than Harmony? No I am not. I am, however implying GCJ was as uncertified as Harmony, meaning they were seen as somewhat equals, despite Harmony's superiority (IMO). The situation would have been very different if Harmony had been officially blessed as Java, but I understand Sun's reluctance in cutting off its own revenue stream > As in none. GCJ and Harmony were the most well known Free/open source Java (the language) compilers, and were the choices available to distros that do not promote proprietary software. These, as you stated, were not Sun-certified Java™ due to the TCK situation - but they could compile java projects well enough.
Maursault 4y ago
In the 1990's, Sun changed from an engineering-driven company to a marketing-driven company. When marketing takes over a company and starts to monkey with the product, that is the beginning of the end.
- xtracto 4y ago
  I don´t know... I remember some of the great 80s/90s Workstation companies: - DEC - Sillicon Graphics - Sun And they were all overtaken by cheap PCs becoming more powerful and Linux OS becoming stronger
Bluecobra 4y ago
In my experience Solaris x86 ran great and stable on commodity hardware. AFAIK they didn’t make Solaris free until version 10 came out in 2005, which may have been too late. Or maybe nobody knew x86 Solaris was even a thing :/

pjmlp 4y ago

Technology first, business second. Also to note Oracle was the only company that actually bothered to make a proper acquisition offer, everyone else was getting ready to watch it crash and burn.

Lammy 4y ago

To be fair, success of MSJVM wouldn’t have necessarily meant success for Sun. They made it as far as “Extend” and there was a whole lawsuit about it, culminating around the time Windows XP SP1 was re-released as SP1a minus the MSJVM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine