Oracle Owns Java, And The Masses Are Restless

This year was the first time that Java One and Oracle Open World occurred at the same time... which meant I got to meet a lot of folks who reeeeeeeeeaaaallllly looooooooooooooove jaaaaaaaaavaaaaaaa. Naturally, they are a bit skittish about Oracle now being Java's primary caretaker. A lot of their attitude comes from fear, uncertainty, and doubt... so I'd like to give my thoughts.

Firstly... I'd like to make it clear that people seem to be holding Oracle to a higher standard than other companies... Let's compare Java to 2 other relatively popular languages:

• .NET: The backbone of new Microsoft applications. Changes to the language are fully controlled by one company, but with an open source implementation (Mono) --
• Objective C: The backbone of all Apple products (OS X, iPod, iPhone, iPad). Changes to the language are fully controlled by one company, but with an open source implementation (Cocotron)
• Java: The backbone of most enterprise software. Changes to the language are fully controlled by one company, but with several open source implementations (Apache Harmony and Open JDK being two)

Why are people only freaking out about the last one on that list?

The new Open JDK initiative is a good start... this was announced at Java One 2010, but it appears that Oracle has been working on it for quite some time. It's also very telling that IBM Joined the Open JDK initiative.

Some are afraid that Oracle will drop the Java Community Process (JCP) and go their own way. Well... perhaps. Will Java grow better and faster without the JCP? Based on how long Sun took to get Java 1.6 out the door, I'd wager that Oracle is probably going to streamline the process... the roadmap for Java 1.7 and 1.8 is pretty aggressive, and Oracle seems dedicated to speeding up the development cycle. That of course means that not everything you want will be in Java 1.7... but on the plus side, you'll get it faster!

Also... I want to make this clear: Oracle is far too invested in Java to think they can ignore building a consensus.

Think about it... Java is popular because it is a nice blend openness and enterprise sponsorship. According to some estimates, Oracle software revenue is 2/3 reliant on Java. What would happen if they tried to skip the consensus-building aspect of the Java community? Folks like IBM, HP, SAP, Intel, AMD, and Google might start looking elsewhere for their platform of choice... If this were to happen, Java would become less popular... They might fork Java, or just do something completely different. That path would ultimately hurt Oracle, and they are smart enough to know it.

Does Oracle's ownership of Java give it an advantage? Of course! Oracle will be putting cool new features into Java that Oracle customers want, and Oracle Java products that use these new features will have a head start... not to mention access to the original engineers. This feedback loop does benefit Oracle's Java applications, but it also ensures better Java.

But we need to keep this in perspective... Oracle is just one of several organizations that pay developers to improve Java, and an organization's true influence on open source projects is directly proportional to the number of great developers they dedicate to it... If Google or IBM decided that they absolutely needed new features in Java 1.7, there's a very simple solution: hire developers that can make it happen. If your company is paying for the code, it's a heck of a lot easier to get the community to agree with your ideas...

In all, I think Oracle's dedication to rapid releases of Java is a good thing... They have said they want to update the JCP, but have also said that they will continue to build consensus. Also, it would be bad for Java, and bad for Oracle for them to not build consensus... and everybody knows it.