[1346] in java-interest
Re: The Future of Java (and Sun)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Rawn Shah)
Wed Aug 30 17:20:40 1995
From: Rawn Shah <rawn@rtd.com>
To: sgrmek@public.srce.hr (Smiljan Grmek - KSI ZGB)
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 11:08:39 -0700 (MST)
Cc: java-interest@java.sun.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950830172542.8820G-100000@jagor.srce.hr> from "Smiljan Grmek - KSI ZGB" at Aug 30, 95 05:52:03 pm
:
: How ungrateful! Sun is willing to spend money in order to make Java
: viable thus ensuring a user base that all of us exploit using a
: net-based, object-oriented, safe, *free* platform - Java & HotJava.
It may sound ungrateful but it is very realistic; I'm trying to play the
devils advocate here. I will not discourage Sun from promoting Java &
HotJava; far from it. I believe that everyone (not just Sun) needs to
start pushing out more useful programs than tiny little Web apps for it to
become a well-accepted, well-used product/language.
:
: Of course GNU will not make money - money is made by hype and promotion.
Actually all in all, GNU does not promote any of its software actively.
They practically don't make any money at all; Stallman for one is paid by
MIT. But this is not relevant.
: Making a useful and stable product is what GNU does - look at GCC. The
: GNU license is restrictive, so the developers can only make money by
: using GCC - all other products are copylefted.
The GNU license is set so that the software is available *free of
charge* and any minor modifications or code based on original will be
*free of charge*. The code that GNU makes is very good for the most part
and easily compete against commercial software.
:
: Java may help feed single developers (or a small team) by providing a
: market and environment for free. Indeed, look at the scaling - an applet
: of only several thousand lines of code may be extremely useful and easily
: developed, maintained and documented by a single person. Without net/Java
: this guy would have to push his idea to a company (difficult?) then have
: it developed and integrated in some monstrous package (C compilers come in
: 100Mb chunks nowadays). Loss of time and money and as usual: user the loser.
The size of the code is primarily due to the fact that someone else has
already written the libraries for you for the most part. To achieve
similar results in, for example, the Win32 environment you can pay through
the nose to MS for their products. Either way, the number of lines of code
may be small for an extremely useful product. The Java libraries are small
currently but you can expect them to grow in size as they start to add
elements similar to those found of professional developer suites. I
wouldn't be surprised if it became the same.
Whether you use the MS Developer CDs or Java tech, I will bet you that
you will still have to work to push the idea to a company. The publicity
of the Web may help it a bit; but think of this: Microsoft's Blackbird
Web browser project allows OLE embedded documents and "applets" within
their pages; this means that the OLE fourth-party ware market may grow
quite a bit. Nice idea; I don't like it really but it provides
applications to be run from the browser and provides live links to the
server data (something Java has yet to do automatically).
:
: An important point is: the only way to test usefulnes and appeal of an
: idea realised as a program is the user response. So we need to provide
: for a large number of such easily built and easily distributed applets
: for users to test. Could anyone guarantee that the successful ones would
: have been included in a monster - definitely no. On the other hand,
: leaving *all* innovation to the academe is also a great loss to J.Q.Pub.
The user response is key. I agree with you. Promotion of the idea and the
availability of a multitude of useful applets will help. Successful
commercial applications of this tech will help more since they will in
turn help promote it as well; so then you will have more than one group
of programmers yelling at the top of their lungs hawking their wares; you
will have large multi-national companies offering cost-effective
commercial software that may affect millions of users and have a greater
impact.
:
: Smi
:
--
Rawn Shah RTD Systems & Networking, Inc.
Vice President 4003 E. Speedway Suite 123, Tucson AZ 85712
rawn@rtd.com (520) 318-0696 FAX: (520) 322-9755
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