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Java Forum / General / March 2007How Sun makes money from Java since it develops it and gives to everybody for free?
Hi, I guess here is not the right place to ask. But I don't know the right place. Sorry. I am a Java developer. I am just curious how this works out. Sun hires people and write Java, the language. Since Sun releases it for free, how Sun makes the benefits out of it? Here is the analogy: Sun makes hammers and distribute hammers(the Java) to anybody for free. Many carpenters(Java programmers or their companies) use the hammers to make furnitures to sell. I know Sun uses those hammers to make furnitures and sell them too. But other companies at least do not need to make hammers, first. How this works? Same question relates to Eclipse. I don't know who write it. But it seems the organization is very well organized and committed, not casually for fun. Since Eclipse is free, how those developers, managers get back for their committed, hard-working? Thank you. Ahh, the money isn't in the hammers. It's in the nails, wood, and the toolboxes. Sun sells servers. Bigger better java apps need, in theory, bigger better (i.e. more expensive) servers. And with luck, you buy their servers, because you know where your bread is butters (or your nail is hammered, to continue the metaphor.) Same with Eclipse. You may use Eclipse to develope, but you have to deploy those apps somewhere, and IBM hopes it will be WebSphere, for the heavy duty stuff. And the other contributors plan that a percentage of eclipse users will ultimately use their {insert product here} for the apps they develop in Eclipse Skip Hollowell > Hi, > [quoted text clipped - 17 lines] > > Thank you. > Ahh, the money isn't in the hammers. It's in the nails, wood, and the > toolboxes. [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > servers, because you know where your bread is butters (or your nail is > hammered, to continue the metaphor.) Not fully follow you. Suppose Sun has 200 employees: 100 writing Java to distribute for free, 100 writing servers to sell. Another company can have only 100 employees and all of them writing servers for sell, since they can get Java from Sun. Does Sun keep some secrets so that they are the only one which can develop servers? >> Ahh, the money isn't in the hammers. It's in the nails, wood, and the >> toolboxes. [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > can get Java from Sun. Does Sun keep some secrets so that they are the > only one which can develop servers? I'm not sure what the ratio is, but I don't think it is that clear cut. The JEE servers require Java to run, so Sun develops that. They give it away so that developers will be familiar with the environment. Those developers will be more successful using JEE, and there will be some vendor "lock-in" as a result (not entirely, because you can get JEE servers from BEA, IBM, Oracle, Sun... but this gives Sun a nice airy, warm fuzzy feeling). Just having its name attached to a very popular programming language can't hurt either. > Ahh, the money isn't in the hammers. It's in the nails, wood, and the > toolboxes. [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > servers, because you know where your bread is butters (or your nail is > hammered, to continue the metaphor.) Not fully follow you. Suppose Sun has 200 employees: 100 writing Java to distribute for free, 100 writing servers to sell. Another company can have only 100 employees and all of them writing servers for sell, since they can get Java from Sun. Does Sun keep some secrets so that they are the only one which can develop servers? By the way, since there are a lot of Java programmers and companies in the world, if Sun all of sudden starts to charge, say $100, for each download of Java JDK, we have to pay for it, since we have no choice. Some people in Sun may become as rich as Bill Gates. > Ahh, the money isn't in the hammers. It's in the nails, wood, and the > toolboxes. [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > servers, because you know where your bread is butters (or your nail is > hammered, to continue the metaphor.) Not fully follow you. Suppose Sun has 200 employees: 100 writing Java to distribute for free, 100 writing servers to sell. Another company can have only 100 employees and all of them writing servers for sell, since they can get Java from Sun. Does Sun keep some secrets so that they are the only one which can develop servers? Also it seems it is a very indirect way to make money. For example, our company develops program in Java. But we didn't by anything from Sun. I am wondering what is the percentage of companies buying servers or other stuff from Sun, because they are using Sun's Java. By the way, since there are a lot of Java programmers and companies in the world, if Sun all of sudden starts to charge, say $100, for each download of Java JDK, we have to pay for it, since we have no choice. Some people in Sun may become as rich as Bill Gates. www schrieb: > By the way, since there are a lot of Java programmers and companies in > the world, if Sun all of sudden starts to charge, say $100, for each > download of Java JDK, we have to pay for it, since we have no choice. > Some people in Sun may become as rich as Bill Gates. no you don't have.. java is open source so you can build your own jdk/jvm ... also there are jvms from other companys like IBM. Also I would say for companys like IBM their investment in eclipse is .. I'd call minor .. 100 java developers paid by a company as large as IBM .. its no big deal for them ... a few Million Dollars per year.. But imagine how many people can develop good Desktop apps because of eclipse - rcp in java? It seems to be a strategical investment for them to lower the market share of .NET . If people are less bound to one OS its good for several hardware/software companies. Christian > It seems to be a strategical investment for them to lower the market > share of .NET . Historically, it's the other way around: .NET was designed as a Java killer.  SignatureJohn W. Kennedy Read the remains of Shakespeare's lost play, now annotated! http://pws.prserv.net/jwkennedy/Double%20Falshood/index.html * TagZilla 0.066 * http://tagzilla.mozdev.org >> Ahh, the money isn't in the hammers. It's in the nails, wood, and the >> toolboxes. [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > they can get Java from Sun. Does Sun keep some secrets so that they are > the only one which can develop servers? I was under the impression that Sun were fairly open about what goes into Java ... <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Community_Process> <http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Sun_to_open_source_Java/0,130061733,13 9149502,00.htm> > Also it seems it is a very indirect way to make money. For example, our > company develops program in Java. But we didn't by anything from Sun. I > am wondering what is the percentage of companies buying servers or other > stuff from Sun, because they are using Sun's Java. Maybe you would enjoy reading this: <http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/magic-cauldron/> > By the way, since there are a lot of Java programmers and companies in > the world, if Sun all of sudden starts to charge, say $100, for each > download of Java JDK, we have to pay for it, since we have no choice. We do have choice, <http://jikes.sourceforge.net/> <http://gcc.gnu.org/java/> From a recent thread in comp.lang.java.*, I believe Eclipse uses it's own compiler, not the JDK. > From a recent thread in comp.lang.java.*, I believe Eclipse uses it's > own compiler, not the JDK. If I am not mistaken, and I would bet a shiny penny that I am not, Eclipse uses whatever JVM is default on your machine. You can setup others once Eclipse is running, though. >> From a recent thread in comp.lang.java.*, I believe Eclipse uses it's >> own compiler, not the JDK. This is the thread I was referring to http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/ec51ab7af3b2f57d > If I am not mistaken, and I would bet a shiny penny that I am not, > Eclipse uses whatever JVM is default on your machine. You can setup > others once Eclipse is running, though. I said "compiler". You are talking about the runtime environment. These are not the same thing! A JVM is not used to compile Java source to bytecode. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse_%28software%29 "the Java ... compiler (ECJ) that comes as part of Eclipse" http://www.eclipse.org/jdt/core/index.php "JDT Core is the Java infrastructure of the Java IDE. It includes: An incremental Java compiler. Implemented as an Eclipse builder, it is based on technology evolved from VisualAge for Java compiler. In particular, it allows to run and debug code which still contains unresolved errors." Good to know. >>> From a recent thread in comp.lang.java.*, I believe Eclipse uses >>> it's own compiler, not the JDK. [quoted text clipped - 19 lines] > particular, it allows to run and debug code which still contains > unresolved errors." >>> From a recent thread in comp.lang.java.*, I believe Eclipse uses it's >>> own compiler, not the JDK. [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > are not the same thing! A JVM is not used to compile Java source to > bytecode. Eclipse definitely uses a different compiler than the one shipped in Sun's JDK: the two compilers exhibit a different set of bugs. I've posted a few threads here where I'm asking for help for a bug I'm stumped with, and after a couple of people tell me they can't reproduce the problem, we eventually tracked it down to Eclipse's compiler generating slightly different bytecode than Sun's compiler. - Oliver "RedGrittyBrick" wrote ... >> I said "compiler". You are talking about the runtime environment. These >> are not the same thing! A JVM is not used to compile Java source to >> bytecode. > Eclipse definitely uses a different compiler than the one shipped in > Sun's JDK: the two compilers exhibit a different set of bugs. I've posted > a few threads here where I'm asking for help for a bug I'm stumped with, > and after a couple of people tell me they can't reproduce the problem, we > eventually tracked it down to Eclipse's compiler generating slightly > different bytecode than Sun's compiler. And delivers different compiler warnings and errors. -- Lew > "RedGrittyBrick" wrote ... > [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > > -- Lew I understand what you are saying. However, if Eclipse uses its own compiler, which obviously it does, how can we be guaranteed that if a program is written for JDK1.6 and Eclipse compiles it sucessfully that it would run from the command line just using the proper CLASSPATH variable with a java my_program command? >[...] if Eclipse uses its own > compiler, which obviously it does, how can we be guaranteed that if a > program is written for JDK1.6 and Eclipse compiles it sucessfully that > it would run from the command line just using the proper CLASSPATH > variable with a java my_program command? There is always a possibility of bugs, of course, but the chance of that causing serious problems should be fairly slim. There are several reasons... One is that what we call the Java "compiler" is actually a /translator/ -- it converts from one high-level, OO, language (called "Java") to another, very similar, high-level, OO, language (called "JVM bytecode"). Those two languages are both pretty well specified, and the mapping between them is also fairly well tied down by the specs, so there isn't that much room for interpretation. And, since they are so /very/ similar, there isn't a lot of room for error either. (BTW, when I say, "very similar" I mean more similar than C and Pascal are to each other, for instance). The Java spec has become pretty complicated over the years, but most of the bugs in javac or Eclipse seem to be (and have been) in the type-checking parts (which are the most complicated), and errors there don't usually have any effect at runtime. That's to say: the JDK compiler and the Eclipse compiler might disagree on whether some code was legal at all, but if they both were willing to compile it then they would probably produce equivalent results. Secondly, the Eclipse people have quite a lot of time to study upcoming Sun releases and (presumably) plenty of opportunity to talk to the people at Sum. And vice versa. So there should be a fair degree of agreement between the two teams -- remember, they are not in competition with each other. Lastly, since Eclipse uses Sun's (or whoever's) JVM as the runtime for the code you create and test, it doesn't really matter very much if they differ. You will, presumably, test your code on the kind(s) of JVM that your users will have, or onto which you will deploy your webservers. So, provided the tests work, you have a reasonable assurance of safety. Of course, if you expect to be shipping your code to run on a variety of different JVMs then you should expand your testing program -- but there's nothing new about that... You aren't going to be shipping Java source to your customers (usually) so it doesn't matter whether the bytecode you ship depends in some obscure way on the compiler you use to generate it -- what matters is whether that bytecode will run the same on the customers' JVMs as it does in your testing environment. -- chris > Not fully follow you. Suppose Sun has 200 employees: 100 writing Java to > distribute for free, 100 writing servers to sell. By servers, Skip means hardware. It's more like building servers. > Another company can > have only 100 employees and all of them writing servers for sell, since > they can get Java from Sun. Sun sells servers that are generally used to run the Solaris or Linux operating systems, not Windows. The idea is that if they can make it easy to develop applications that run portably on all kinds of servers, then there will be more chance that people will buy their servers. If server programmers have to choose an operating system to target, many of them will choose Windows and Sun will be excluded from the market. If they write portable applications, then Sun can compete on a fair playing field with other server manufacturers on the basis of customer service, performance, etc. Obviously, they believe they can do okay on such a playing field. The other part of it is that Sun makes a fair bit of money licensing Java-related software to other vendors. Although they give away the JRE, they charge BEA and IBM plenty of money to license their base J2EE platform. In turn, BEA and IBM can sell their augmented J2EE implementations. Many companies will buy J2EE implementations from BEA or IBM because they get a high level of customer support, training, etc. WebLogic can cost tens of thousands of dollars for a minimal installation, and up to millions for something more complex! Some of each of those purchases is funneled back to Sun. You also asked about Eclipse. Eclipse is a more traditional open source project, so some of its code is just written because people want to, much like Linux or XFree86. The biggest company behind Eclipse, though, is IBM, and they also make plenty of money off of it. By making Eclipse open source, people will go in an do whatever they can to make sure that it's a relly great basic Java IDE. IBM then sells a commercial version that adds integration with WebSphere and other advanced features. When a feature starts to become commoditized because a number of vendors have it, IBM can donate it to the core Eclipse platform, and they no longer have to do all the work to maintain it. They can spend more of their development effort developing new features that distinguish their product from commercial competitors, rather than playing catch-up by fixing editor bugs. (That overstates the case a bit; IBM does spend a LOT of effort maintaining Eclipse; but they save something versus trying to maintain, or even do QA for, the whole thing themselves.) SignatureChris Smith > Hi, > [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > people and write Java, the language. Since Sun releases it for free, how > Sun makes the benefits out of it? Sun sells hardware, for one. Then, by making Java free (and now open source), Sun managed to spread Java in a few years to about every single industry. The companies using Java now aren't dependent on a single software vendor anymore. Thus, by making Java free, Sun is really harming a competitor here. They did the same with OpenOffice.org, which started as a commercial software and which is now LGPL (yup, LGPL, not GPL). OpenOffice.org is spreading like fire in Europe: in companies, administration, for personnal use, etc. This is also harming in a big way a competitor. A competitor that otherwise could maybe have been able to spread its monopoly (illegally, but that is another topic) to the server market. Sun makes money on the hardware, so they don't mind to make software a commodity when they can now. Just like with Solaris, that is getting more and more open. Besides that, Sun is making money on all the "smart Java cards" and on the J2ME VM. There are countries now where each and every citizen is carrying a Java smart card as an identity piece, enough said... If I'm not mistaken there are 3 main J2ME VM makers and Sun is one of them. The amount of cellphones running Java in the world *dwarfes* the number of desktop/servers running Java. J2ME VMs used to be expensive and only recently did one company make its J2ME VM implementation open. Adoption of Java in various environment, most notably cellphones and JavaCard also drives the need for Sun servers. There's a saying at Sun that: "adoption of the Java platform is a leading indicator of Sun's business" http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/the_dot_in_2_0 > There's a saying at Sun that: "adoption of the Java platform > is a leading indicator of Sun's business" > > http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/the_dot_in_2_0 So if Java slows down we should sell our Sun stock? -- Lew > > There's a saying at Sun that: "adoption of the Java platform > > is a leading indicator of Sun's business" [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > -- Lew You actually own stock in Sun? Signature"My first thought was, he lied in every word, That hoary cripple, with malicious eye Askance to watch the working of his lie" - Browning (remove 'invalid domain' to reply) Killing all posts from Google Groups The Usenet Improvement Project: http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html > If I'm not mistaken there are 3 main J2ME VM makers and Sun is > one of them. The amount of cellphones running Java in the [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > Adoption of Java in various environment, most notably cellphones > and JavaCard also drives the need for Sun servers. Another interesting implementation is the Parallax Javelin STAMP: http://www.parallax.com/javelin/index.asp Its a DSP that fits a 24 pin DIP socket and is programmed in a subset of Java 1.2 (i.e. no reals and nothing that is inappropriate for the environment) but is extended with a number of virtualised timers, UARTs etc. Its pin compatible with the older BS2 BASIC STAMP. I've used the latter and really rate them but haven't tried the Javelin, mainly because its power consumption (30 mA at 8 volts) is too high for my applications - the BS2 only needs 8 mA at 8v. Signaturemartin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org | >Reply to article by: www <www@nospam.com> >Date written: Fri, 09 Mar 2007 13:18:29 -0500 >MsgID:<ess8e7$5cu$1@news.nems.noaa.gov> >I guess here is not the right place to ask. But I don't know the right >place. Sorry. >I am a Java developer. I am just curious how this works out. Sun hires >people and write Java, the language. Since Sun releases it for free, how >Sun makes the benefits out of it? You learned JAVA because you want to sell your talents to an employer. SUN uses it's wide customer base to pressure big businesses with big money to support SUN's efforts to share that customer base. Sun does this by selling consulting, service, advertising, and training to companies that can afford it. Look at all the SUN books. Look at all the SUN certified developers. I don't see many SUN servers, but I see lots of servers that support JAVA. Big business needs to pay SUN to help them integrate JAVA into their systems because JAVA is popular among their customers and their customers demand it. JAVA (the language) can be re-compiled by anybody, but would you really want a different version of JAVA other than the one supported by SUN? How do you know if it is going to be fully compatible? What will you do if you find bugs in it? While JAVA is free, it is not an open standard. SUN sets the standard and they have credibility to make people feel secure in that standard. The LINUX kernal is free and open source but the security comes from knowing that there is still a standard that determines what will go into Linux and what Linux will support. The packages built around LINUX are what make money, and even though you can build your own package, most people would rather pay someone to do it for them, ie -- mom and pop. Likewise, while you could do lots of things with JAVA on your own and for free from scratch, from a big business point of view your money is better spent buying an off the shelf package that is a mature product that has already stood the test of time. The Sage ============================================================= http://members.cox.net/the.sage/index.htm "...I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours" (Stephen F. Roberts) ============================================================= > I am a Java developer. I am just curious how this works out. Sun hires > people and write Java, the language. Since Sun releases it for free, how > Sun makes the benefits out of it? I think the short answer is: they don't. SUN is not really making money on Java. IBM, BEA and Oracle are making money on Java. SUN makes their money on systems. There are two indirect ways that SUN benefits from Java: 1) it is a very good PR for SUN 2) systems needs software and all the big system vendors know that they should contribute something and SUN contributes with Java. > Same question relates to Eclipse. I don't know who write it. But it > seems the organization is very well organized and committed, not > casually for fun. Since Eclipse is free, how those developers, managers > get back for their committed, hard-working? Eclipse is backed by some big companies - especially IBM. They pay for it. IBM get a platform to base WSAD on. They get PR. They do their contribution to the software for their systems. Arne Free MagazinesGet these publications absolutely FREE for up to 12 months. There are no hidden fees and no obligation. 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