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Sun drops Java standards effort

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CIOL Bureau
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Sun Microsystems announced it is giving up on making its Java programming language an industry standard and withdrew its Java standard proposal from the ECMA, the European standards body. Earlier this year Sun withdrew the standards adoption proposal from the International Standards Organization (ISO).



Sun officials said that neither organization offers sufficient copyright protection that would enable Sun to enforce the cross platform compatibility that is at the heart of the Java language. If the ISO or ECMA would have adopted Java and published the specifications, any company could have taken the code and issue a proprietary version in violation of Sun’s "write-once-run-everywhere" policy for Java software applications.



"They don't have any mechanism for holding the copyright," said David Harrah, a Sun Microsystems spokesman. "If we gave it to them and they turned around and published the specs, anyone could do anything with Java and not pass the compatability tests. And compatability is the key to Java."



Ironically, IBM, one of the strongest supporters of Java has strongly supported the industry standardization move. "Our main objective has been to have Java become an open standard," said an IBM spokesman. "We think at the end of the day, these standardization talks will come out for the best."



Sun’s ECMA announcement came a day after Sun chief Scott McNealy announced the generic version of Java will be free for software developers to use. McNealy ssaid he is not concerned about the financial impact on making Java free. Fundamentally, software is going to be free. We're not going to make money selling Java licenses. We're losing money on Java, and each year we lose a little more.''

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