Oh, JavaOne has started.....
JavaOne attendees decry Sun's focus on profits
By Lee Copeland
06/06/2000 SAN FRANCISCO ? Developers at Sun Microsystems Inc.'s JavaOne conference here today lauded announcements of improved support for wireless devices and Macintosh-based applications within the Java programming language. But some decried what they said was too much focus on the business aspects of working with Java.
Scott G. McNealy, Sun's CEO and chairman, kicked off the opening session of JavaOne by touting the big bucks that developers can rake in from Java projects. With the subtlety of a neon sign, one slide in McNealy's presentation boasted: "Java=Fortune."
After the keynote, some developers complained that McNealy and other Sun officials put too much emphasis on the potential monetary benefits of Java.
"Talking about how much money could be made was overstepping a bit," said Cliff Briscoe, chief technology officer at Edge Technologies Inc. in Laurel, Md. "The ubiquity of Java is not (there) because people saw it as a way of making money. People viewed it as shareware/freeware that can run anywhere. This is not a business development community."
Java developer Zachary Forsyth, a senior software engineer at Retek Inc. in Minneapolis, said Sun's focus on profits was a cause for concern. "Java should be a standard and not a brand, hopefully controlled by a community and not by a company," Forsyth said.
Developers voiced more optimism about the pledge for better Java support from surprise guest speaker Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.'s CEO. Jobs pledged that Apple would offer Sun's Java 2 Standard Edition with the next version of the Macintosh operating system, Mac OS X, when it ships later this year.
Java support for the Macintosh operating system has lagged behind Sun's development of the technology, doubling the development chores for information technology organizations that have been forced to develop two different sets of applications for PCs and Macintosh machines.
"Java is all we're doing, and its a hassle to do two versions of things," said Mitch Hendrickson, a senior engineer at Telestream Inc. in Grass Valley, Calif. "The current Java for the Mac is a version back."
"The Mac has not been so good on Java," agreed Bjorn Walter, a systems analyst at Davitis Noor AB in Stockholm. "It's nice that they are finally going to catch up."
In another hot point in the keynote, Scott McNealy announced the release of J2ME, short for Java 2 Micro Edition. A very small version of Java, Sun's J2ME can be embedded in wireless devices such as cellular phones and pagers, McNealy said.
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