First, let me tell you a little story: A few years ago I worked for an university and we decided to replace a closed, proprietary backend infrastructure with an open one. The strange thing is that we replaced IBM with… IBM. You see, a long time ago IBM had a self-centered, closed mentality but since Gerstner’s time as IBM CEO things changed a lot. So, the old unpalatable IBM was replaced with the new, desirable IBM. A similar argument can be made for Sun… you probably still remember the closed Sun, the closed Java. Interestingly when we replaced IBM with IBM we also replaced the database backend: from Oracle to IBM.
Oracle.
Let me continue my little story: Fast-forward a few years and I accepted a job at the same university as data centre manager. The 3 biggest universities in the city had bought the same accounting/payroll system. This system had a Oracle backend: database, application server and financial extensions. It so happened that each component had completely different licensing terms: one was on concurrent connections another on concurrent users, yet another on the total number of users. The notion of user also varied: The financial application had thousands of users, but it connected with a single user to the application server. The usage of multiple CPUs was also subjected to licensing. I hate to think on the countless hours spent by the data centre managers just parsing all this. It still gives me a headache.
But it does not stop here: even as a manager I was still very technically inclined (and had previous experience as a database manager): I would subscribe to the view that Oracle databases are a too-much complex database system that seem to be highly profitable to Oracle and the contractors that are payed to maintain such a complex system. Between Oracle DB and IBM DB/2 I would take DB/2 any time (at least 5 years ago where my professional path changed). Of course, for most applications PostgreSQL is more than enough…
The point is, as you probably have noticed by now: I am not comfortable with Oracle’s corporate culture. I am not comfortable with Oracle taking the lead on Java. In fact I can think of no worse corporation to lead Java.
I would also like to draw your attention to size and power bias. My point is this: people tend to dislike Microsoft, but part of that dislike does not come from corporate culture but from the influence and power that Microsoft has (still) in computing. I dread to think of the consequences of people like Larry Ellison or Steve Jobs having the same influence as Bill Gates. I am not defending Bill, just suggesting that it could be much worse. We do not feel the pain of Oracle (or Apple for that matter) because they do not have the massive OS/Office market share that MS has.
I always had a love relationship with Java (though I have a background in declarative languages). It was amazing to see the appearance of new languages on top of the JVM (I use Groovy, Clojure and Jython). The idea of a shared VM (and shared libraries) which a set of cooperating and competing languages on top is wonderful…
But I am starting to doubt that the JVM world will stay an open community where the best ideas can be incepted and flourish.
If IBM had bought Sun…
I do not trust you, Larry!
Recommending readings (from James Gosling’s blog):
Quite the firestorm
The shit finally its the fan
Cynical chuckes
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