Why did Sun (now owned by Oracle, I know) develop the Java Plaform? How does it make business sense? It seems to me like it would be a very expensive project (also, any ideas on how much they spent/are spending to develop/maintain the platform?). Are they making money by selling support or something?
+4
A:
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.291169.19
In addition certifications, consulting, books.
Also hardware (They would not have sold as many Servers if it were not for Java) and peripheral software (SunOS).
Companies like Sun/Oracle also make money supporting the JVMs after EOL (end of life) There are large customers that pay for maintenance builds of older JVMs.
Romain Hippeau
2010-06-08 21:05:43
Consensus there seems to be the money was in redistributing JVM implementations.
Mark Peters
2010-06-08 21:08:17
@Mark Peters Maybe they made a lot of money that way, theu also made a lot of money from the above, especially the consulting and training.
Romain Hippeau
2010-06-08 21:25:42
+5
A:
Ancient history in web-time, but the wrote it as a push for cross-compatibility. "Write once, run everywhere" was a very attractive option in the midst of Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, etc.
While that dream was never perfected, Sun was a trailblazer in the virtualization field. The JVM is still a very impressive platform today and in my opinion has far exceeded the importance of the Java language itself.
Now ... how do they make money? Well, that's probably something Schwartz could never figure out, and possibly something Oracle is worried about. Nevertheless, Java is huge in the enterprise and will continue to make profit on that fact for the forseeable future
tl;dr they were marketing the fact that their platform (and programs written for it) could run on multiple host platforms and potentially avoiding rewrites, platform dependent maintenance, etc.
Matt
2010-06-08 21:06:26
It's worth noting that Jonathan Schwartz came on long after Java was well established, so it wasn't just his baby. (prior to that he was cutting his teeth with Lighthouse Design, doing work with NeXTSTEP.)
Beska
2010-06-08 21:12:02
"Write once, run everywhere" is´, while perhaps not perfect, close enough to be still a very attractive option. It's the difference between "two months of testing and debugging to move the app to a new platform" and "two years to rewrite the app completely".
Michael Borgwardt
2010-06-08 21:13:07
@Michael you're right. Maybe I'm not wording it clearly enough, but my point is that whole concept is still important, even if the language isn't. JVM, CLR, etc are still highly preferred due to their portability.
Matt
2010-06-08 21:15:44
I'm not going to upvote you because I don't upvote answers to off-topic questions. But you've just about got it right - the part you're missing is that Sun wanted to sell Sun hardware into shops that more and more were only buying Windows stuff. If the program the customer wanted to run could run on any hardware, Intel or Sparc or RS/6000 or PowerPC, Sun could compete with the WinTel vendors on their merits.
Paul Tomblin
2010-06-08 21:16:56