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IMO it was a strategic move to commoditize their complement. My impression during that era was that Scott McNealy saw Microsoft (whose strength was in software

IMO it was a strategic move to commoditize their complement. My impression during that era was that Scott McNealy saw Microsoft (whose strength was in software) as Sun Microsystems' (whose strength was in hardware) most important competitor and took steps to stem their influence. Java was one example of a giveaway intended to create a Sun-controlled moat to protect their business. The purchase of StarOffice and its open-sourcing as OpenOffice, which eventually begat LibreOffice, seemed to be an attempt to put a dent in Microsoft's MSOffice revenue.

mike_hearn 4y ago
Spolski argues here that it was actually backwards: they weren't commoditizing their compliment, they were commoditizing their core: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ If you sell hardware the last thing you want to do is commoditize hardware, which is what a portable software strategy does. What you want is hardware lockin. Java was the opposite of that. Sun eventually had to be sold, but Microsoft didn't.
giantrobot 4y ago
Sun intended Java to be an uber-platform, to get it running on everything from tiny embedded systems to their giant E10k systems. They'd make money selling JVM licenses in various verticals. Sun bought into Netscape's vision of the web as the delivery platform for software. Java could run on the server side and then as applets in the browser on the client. The expansion of Java would then expand its use in places Sun wanted to charge for licenses. Java wouldn't create a moat around their hardware. It was intended to eliminate Microsoft's moat around the Windows platform. If ISVs could write software in Java that could be delivered by a browser on any OS, the actual OS stopped being important. As long as there was a browser and JVM available on a platform it could run that software.

mike_hearn 4y ago

Spolski argues here that it was actually backwards: they weren't commoditizing their compliment, they were commoditizing their core: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ If you sell hardware the last thing you want to do is commoditize hardware, which is what a portable software strategy does. What you want is hardware lockin. Java was the opposite of that. Sun eventually had to be sold, but Microsoft didn't.

giantrobot 4y ago

Sun intended Java to be an uber-platform, to get it running on everything from tiny embedded systems to their giant E10k systems. They'd make money selling JVM licenses in various verticals. Sun bought into Netscape's vision of the web as the delivery platform for software. Java could run on the server side and then as applets in the browser on the client. The expansion of Java would then expand its use in places Sun wanted to charge for licenses. Java wouldn't create a moat around their hardware. It was intended to eliminate Microsoft's moat around the Windows platform. If ISVs could write software in Java that could be delivered by a browser on any OS, the actual OS stopped being important. As long as there was a browser and JVM available on a platform it could run that software.