BANGALORE: Collaborate is the key word for Jeff Jackson, Vice President, Java and Developer Platforms Group, Sun Microsystems this year. As Sun 'opens' up more and more of its initiatives this year including Java with Project Harmony and with OpenSolaris planned next month, he is convinced that the company's growth will be driven by increased sharing among people from all over the world. In an interview with Sathya Mithra Ashok and Priya Padmanabhan, Jackson talks on the future of Java and Sun's hand in it.

Excerpts.

There was talk about a year back on Sun joining the Eclipse initiative, but nothing came out of it. Is Sun still contemplating the idea?

No, we will not be doing that now. With the Java Community Process (JCP) we believe that people who work on these have a choice. NetBeans is the number two choice for a whole lot of Java developers and that's because we offer a value proposition. It is not about religion – it is about what kind of a problem exists and what will make a right choice to solve that problem. Now people can choose between NetBeans and Eclipse and choice spurs competition. It will produce good solutions in both tools. And that's the way it will stay.

With all these initiatives to make more products from Sun opensource, do you think the company is answering the fear of many that Opensource means nobody to turn to?

I think so, yes. Each opensource culture is different and for some it just doesn't work. As far as Sun is concerned, we want to keep the essence of opensource but also ensure that it sticks to certain standards. Of course, we will be criticized for that too. But we ensure that at the end of the day there is somebody to come back to. For that of course we have to ensure that it keeps moving forward and we prefer to follow a moderated approach. Some people have complaints about that, but then nobody has done something like Java either.

How do you see India fitting into your overall Java collaboration effort?

India has a huge Java expertise and they can build themselves an edge if they can only come out, share and collaborate. Everybody these days have to get into the game or take a backseat. And everyone of the countries will contribute in different ways. Brazil, for example, is all out for Java but it will contribute in a way different from other countries.

The only common factor is that for all engineers it's the problem solving idea of the effort. Its like a puzzle that they got to solve. And that is the center of everything. There are other attributes like career and money, which are given different priorities by various people, but they are secondary to the problem solving allure. That's what is globally common.

How do you see Java changing over the next ten years?

Java started out in days when nobody was thinking about servers. J2SE now has the widest range of developers. It has helped all of us move forward an immense amount and has started in many ways an evolutionary process. Now we are starting to put Java in devices like cell phones and cards. Gaming is also becoming an interesting area. And as each of these new steps are taken they spawn their own sub-segments which leads to more implementations and growth within Java.

The important thing is to continue fostering innovation. I like surprises. Growth will be focused but I am sure a lot of things will come up as we go along. In the near future, I see more real time stuff coming out from Java and more business orientation. Java will make those processes a success, just like it made Web Services a success.