a lesson from IBM's past
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| mojavelinux Feb 28, 2004 8:47 AM EDT |
As I see it, this question parallels one with which we are all too familiar in the history of computing. What did IBM have to gain from making a personal computer? Surely there is no need for everyone to have their own computer, right? Enter M$. Success is about being in the right place at the right time, nothing more complicated. There is one thing that is standing between Java and its future and freeing the code would close the gap. Why? Its all about winning over the hearts of the people. If Java was open sourced, a walk through a city like D.C. or San Francisco would render your ears bleeding with all buzz about Java. The community would embrace it to the point where you wouldn't find a Linux CD without it. Programmers would finally assume that all target platforms had the JVM running and would not hesitate to program in it. Am I too optimistic? Maybe. But it feels right and it seems like this is the final thread that can bring all these companies (IBM, Sun, Oracle, Novell) together to defeat the monopoly of M$. There is no question that the silver bullet of software, the one that Fredrick Brooks did not anticipate, was collaboration. This move would see the realization of that in the Java community. I don't think anyone is going to forget about Sun, just like no one as forgotten about Trolltrec, MySQL or IBM when they released their products as open source. Sun, just do it already. |
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