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I started in tech in the late 90s. Here's what I recall: 1. Sun originally meant Stanford University Network and the university shared the open-source ethos of
by ioblomov 4y ago
I started in tech in the late 90s. Here's what I recall:
1. Sun originally meant Stanford University Network and the university shared the open-source ethos of Unix along with UC Berkeley.
2. Although Microsoft was already dominant on the desktop by then, the Internet was still up for grabs.
3. And even though JavaScript shipped with Netscape (meaning almost from the beginning of the public Internet), it was still severely underpowered.
4. Java, in the form of "applets" (mini apps running on the browser), could add dynamism to HTML (CSS didn't exist yet) and so define a new software paradigm for the Internet.
5. Sun, like Apple, made money on hardware.
All five factors incentivized Sun to give Java away. Java applets, although a cool demo for the time, never really went anywhere, but Java did go on to compete with Microsoft for the (enterprise) server.