How Sun makes money from Java since it develops it and gives to everybodyfor free?

[The_Sage]

Date written: Fri, 09 Mar 2007 13:18:29 -0500
MsgID:<[email protected]>

I guess here is not the right place to ask. But I don't know the right
place. Sorry.

I am a Java developer. I am just curious how this works out. Sun hires
people and write Java, the language. Since Sun releases it for free, how
Sun makes the benefits out of it?

You learned JAVA because you want to sell your talents to an employer. SUN uses
it's wide customer base to pressure big businesses with big money to support
SUN's efforts to share that customer base. Sun does this by selling consulting,
service, advertising, and training to companies that can afford it. Look at all
the SUN books. Look at all the SUN certified developers. I don't see many SUN
servers, but I see lots of servers that support JAVA. Big business needs to pay
SUN to help them integrate JAVA into their systems because JAVA is popular among
their customers and their customers demand it.

JAVA (the language) can be re-compiled by anybody, but would you really want a
different version of JAVA other than the one supported by SUN? How do you know
if it is going to be fully compatible? What will you do if you find bugs in it?
While JAVA is free, it is not an open standard. SUN sets the standard and they
have credibility to make people feel secure in that standard.

The LINUX kernal is free and open source but the security comes from knowing
that there is still a standard that determines what will go into Linux and what
Linux will support. The packages built around LINUX are what make money, and
even though you can build your own package, most people would rather pay someone
to do it for them, ie -- mom and pop. Likewise, while you could do lots of
things with JAVA on your own and for free from scratch, from a big business
point of view your money is better spent buying an off the shelf package that is
a mature product that has already stood the test of time.

The Sage

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[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?=]

I am a Java developer. I am just curious how this works out. Sun hires
people and write Java, the language. Since Sun releases it for free, how
Sun makes the benefits out of it?

I think the short answer is: they don't. SUN is not really making
money on Java. IBM, BEA and Oracle are making money on Java.
SUN makes their money on systems. There are two indirect
ways that SUN benefits from Java: 1) it is a very good
PR for SUN 2) systems needs software and all the big
system vendors know that they should contribute something
and SUN contributes with Java.

Same question relates to Eclipse. I don't know who write it. But it
seems the organization is very well organized and committed, not
casually for fun. Since Eclipse is free, how those developers, managers
get back for their committed, hard-working?

Eclipse is backed by some big companies - especially IBM. They pay
for it.

IBM get a platform to base WSAD on. They get PR. They do their
contribution to the software for their systems.

Arne

 

[Martin Gregorie]

If I'm not mistaken there are 3 main J2ME VM makers and Sun is
one of them. The amount of cellphones running Java in the
world *dwarfes* the number of desktop/servers running Java.
J2ME VMs used to be expensive and only recently did one company
make its J2ME VM implementation open.

Adoption of Java in various environment, most notably cellphones
and JavaCard also drives the need for Sun servers.

Another interesting implementation is the Parallax Javelin STAMP:

http://www.parallax.com/javelin/index.asp

Its a DSP that fits a 24 pin DIP socket and is programmed in a subset of
Java 1.2 (i.e. no reals and nothing that is inappropriate for the
environment) but is extended with a number of virtualised timers, UARTs
etc.

Its pin compatible with the older BS2 BASIC STAMP. I've used the latter
and really rate them but haven't tried the Javelin, mainly because its
power consumption (30 mA at 8 volts) is too high for my applications -
the BS2 only needs 8 mA at 8v.