Sun confers with licensees over control of Java

By JAMES NICCOLAI AND LAURA ROHDE
IDG News Service, 03/03/00

Sun Thursday continued delicate talks with some of its largest Java licensees, as the company struggles to define a viable development process for the evolving technology. The efforts come after Sun was hit with a scathing rebuke from a European standards body that had once been pegged by Sun to manage the process.

Sun has drafted a proposal for a new development process, called Java Community Process 2.0 (JCP), that it said gives licensees more control over the way new standards will be set for Java. Among the changes, Sun is considering relinquishing its veto option over certain "control points" in the development process, including decisions about which new technical specifications will be considered for the platform, a Sun spokeswoman says.

Key Java licensees including BEA Systems, Oracle, Novell, IBM and Hewlett-Packard were presented with a draft of the new proposal at a meeting with Sun Wednesday. Discussions with representatives of some of those firms continued by telephone all day Thursday, the spokeswoman says.

"Our goal is to settle this as quickly as possible," the spokeswoman says, although she says no timetable for the talks has been set.

At issue is a need for Sun to reduce concern among some of its most important licensing partners - most notably HP and IBM - about how new specifications for Java will be set as the technology evolves, analysts say.

Sun wants to retain sufficient control over Java to ensure compatibility across all vendors' products and to allow it to shape the technology in accordance with its vision, says Mark Driver, research director with Gartner Group. A few of Sun's Java licensees, most notably IBM, are demanding a more democratic process, one that guarantees that Sun can't coopt Java at some time in the future by adding features that best suit its own products and strategy.

"Sun has taken the benevolent dictator approach, where you have to believe Sun won't proprietize Java in the future. IBM wants to see a formal process that gives them legal recourse to prevent Sun from doing that," Driver says.

JCP 2.0 is Sun's attempt to resolve that conflict.

"What we've been doing with JCP 2.0 is trying to strike a balance - to ensure that compatibility is maintained, that the technology evolves quickly, and that the process is as open as possible," the Sun spokeswoman says.

Meanwhile, as the talks with licensees got under way yesterday, Sun was sharply criticized by a Geneva-based standards group called the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA). Sun had made overtures that it would turn control of the Java development process over to ECMA but started to back away from that move late last year. Sun informed ECMA in a letter last week that its relationship was effectively over.

"In the last year, the JCP has expanded its level of activity to a point where we now believe the interests of the entire Java Community will be best met by continuing to evolve the Java specifications with the open JCP process," George Paolini, Sun vice president, Java Community Development Software Products & Platforms, wrote in a letter to ECMA's president.

Sun wasn't convinced that ECMA had clearly defined a process that would protect the compatibility of Java or Sun's copyrights, the Sun spokeswoman says. "Frankly, they scared us," she says.

ECMA responded by chastising Sun for causing an "enormous waste of experts' time and companies' money." In an interview, a top ECMA official says Sun's criticisms of the group are merely a smokescreen for its real motives for ending the relationship.

"They just don't want to give up control" of Java, says Jan van den Beld, secretary-general of ECMA. "It is 100% my opinion that Sun is publicly saying they want to make Java a standard, but privately not making it happen."

At least one analyst agreed that Sun isn't ready yet to turn Java over to an independent standards body.

"Sun would only submit Java to a standards body on their own terms," Gartner Group's Driver says. "They don't believe that Java is stable enough, or that it has achieved sufficient critical mass, that they can relinquish control."

Other analysts say Sun's decision to keep the development of Java within its JCP effort may signal a change in philosophy at the top of Sun's Java division, where longtime Java chief Alan Baratz stepped down last August. Ironically, Sun's Java efforts are now steered by Pat Seultz, who previously led IBM's Java team, noted Dana Gardner, an analyst with Aberdeen Group.

Analysts say any new development process that is agreed to will have to strike a delicate balance between the amount of control Sun retains over Java and the degree of openness it is prepared to offer the Java community.

"Revising the JCP and bringing in these top licensees seems a prudent thing to do," Gardner says. "The question is how much pressure some of these major partners are going to be able to exert on Sun."

Sun, in Palo Alto, can be reached at 650-960-1300 or at www.sun.com/. ECMA can be contacted at 41-22-849-6000, or at www.ecma.ch/.