Nolan,
IBM wrote their own Native mode Java just like MSFT did, and Netscape wrote Javascript. Everyone is trying to create a proprietary tech. to help themselves. Don't forget, IBM thinks Java is the future and they think their mainframe servers and entrenched monolithic application base will beat out Sun's workstations. It's really kind of funny, Java on CMS/MVS, I've been on both in the past, and graduated from college with the same "IBM sucks" mentality as most. However, CMS was actually a very nice system to work on.
I don't follow the part about "Why don't they support NT/Win95...", but Solaris 2.5 does run on my little Intel Pentium 133 quite nicely. I fully expect MSFT to add NFS to NT sooner than later, I have already tried several products from White Pine and others and they're quite nice. If you're implying Sun should adopt the Windows API, there is already an effort underway to create a Motif/X to WinAPI in the shareware community. Native Wintel support would be slow death, but an easy developers path to crossplatform GUI API's would be a boon to Sun. As a developer I could port and scale on Solaris, NT's still learning to scale.
Sun, like every other UNIX vendor tried to create a propritary tech. for example Openlook vs Motif or X. I recall a few years back we almost didn't upgrade to Solaris because they weren't going to support Motif.
>As far as telling you how sun is going to make money from Java...
>Well, it takes a little more imagination than what you can put
>in a spreadsheet.
I didn't ask for numbers, just product names.
I still believe Java's contribution will remain minimal for years (as applied to Suns bottom line), but the "proprietary" Java and PicoJava VM in silicon is the keys to the castle Sun has not yet licensed away. A good analogy IHMO is Netscape, they give away they're browser to try and leverage their proprietary server extensions, just as Microsoft does. Oh yeah, some folks believe Netscape sells their browser, let's see, they claim what is it, 40,000,000 netscape users, at $50 each that would be $2,000,000,000 in sales. That's absolutely false, they don't make anywhere near that much money. So getting back to Sun, the Java chips (hardware) will or should sell into the appliance market nicely if Java survives the attempts by others to co-opt Java as their own.
When you make your living off "Open Standards", your only avenue for revenue is the hardware you sell. The software side becomes a "commodity" and no software company even survived selling commodity software. |
