By Nick Patience
Despite Sun Microsystems Inc making the announcement of a Real Time Expert Group to push forward standardization of real-time Java, IBM Corp is adamant that it will be leading the group, whatever form it takes. The group was part of Sun’s new Java community licensing and development mode for Java that it announced at the Java 2 launch in early December. The idea got a boost last week when the National Committee for Information Technology Standardization (NCITS) voted not to sponsor the rival Real Time Working Group – which was backed by many of Sun’s rivals – and its proposals for extending Java for real-time applications. IBM director of Java marketing, David Gee acknowledges that Hewlett-Packard Co, one of the prime movers behind the alternative Java group, has a lot of expertise in the real-time space. And coupled with the fact that Sun was not moving fast enough with its real-time efforts and other licensees [of Java] found the license unpalatable, it was understandable that such a breakaway occurred. So why didn’t IBM go with them? Because IBM believes it is more important to have one standard, adding that it wasn’t clear that it was going to be compatible with Java. As for the forthcoming Jini distributed Java technology, which is due to be launched on Monday, January 25, IBM is still evaluating it and is yet to see the licensing agreement or source code. IBM has a similar technology in its AlphaWorks lab called TSpaces, but there’s no news on that until after it has finished evaluating Jini. Gee thinks the current mania for open source sets a good standard for the possible direction of future Java development. For IBM, server-side Java continues to proliferate in three major verticals: finance of all kinds; retail and distribution including the integration of physical and virtual stores; and manufacturing control systems, including such mission critical devices as nuclear-powered submarines.
