GEEK SPEAK: No collaboration with Microsoft

The man carries no gizmos on his person, lives by his Mac and swears by Java.
The legendary James Gosling, credited with creating the Java technology, kept
around 2,500 developers in thrall at the SunTech-2004 conference in Hyderabad.
In a free-wheeling interview with Nandita Singh of CyberMedia News, the father
of Java says why the technology is full of beans and elaborates on Sun's stand
on making Java open source.

What is the future of Java?

Everywhere and wherever the developers take it. The complexity of the
networks of things is increasing and will increase further at an accelerated
pace. Staggering lines of codes, sizes of applications and number of nodes has
to be handled with the most simplistic across the platform solutions. Java is
the only language that makes it possible to combat complexity effectively-be
it with JDS 1.5, Netbean or Java Studio. The future is software all around us
embedded in things and we believe it will be Java everywhere. The Java community
is expanding and in India itself the number is growing every day. The movement
is building up because Java brings in all kinds of diversity on one platform.

There has been a lot of noise about making Java an open
source language. What's Sun's stand?

Java is already an open source language. The code is available to just about
any developer who can build applications using it. The only issue we differ with
is the definition of open source as is widely understood. If you build using
Java and want to redistribute the product, then it has to be tested for
interoperability by Sun to ensure that what is going around is Java as we have
conceptualized and retains its essence on which it sells. As the developer is
using our brand Java and we do not want to lose our brand value by not
exercising rights on what is selling as Java. Wherever Java is, it is there
because of the Java community, which is just like any other open source
community.

Can Sun and Microsoft come together?

Well, we tried. But what did Microsoft do with C++? They tried to pass off
Java as their proprietary software. The lawsuit is a bygone story now. We won
and they lost. Microsoft does not go by a collaborative approach. I do not see
any collaboration possibility between the two, as I do not expect their approach
to change. They are certainly not community oriented.

What kind of product development is happening in India?

All kinds. The developers in India are doing everything-enterprise as well
as support software. They are the ones who populated Silicon Valley and the top
engineers are all Indians. Java development is happening all over the world and
India is playing a substantial role. What direction and shape it would take is
difficult to predict, though the wild forecasts we had made on Internet boom
didn't go bust. It validated what we predict is not insane and we do have the
luxury of predictability in the sense of trends at large.

What about web services?

Web services aren't something that's come up recently. It has been
around for quite some time, though of late, it is being talked about more. It
will evolve as all things do. e-Bay would have never thought people will sell
and buy cars online but people just decided to do it. Such disruptions make the
technology application interesting and dynamic.