By Dan Jones and Tom Hughes
Sun Microsystems Inc appears to be considering alternatives to the International Standards Organization’s Publicly Available Specifications process for standardizing Java. The sticking point has been the standards body’s insistence that it take full control of the future development and maintenance of the language, shutting out Sun’s control. Speaking at the Java Enterprise Solutions Symposium in Paris Javasoft president, Alan Baratz said that Sun was examining its options. We could go to other bodies, he said.
The ISO has changed the rules on PAS proposal submissions – PAS is not usually a channel open to commercial organizations – and Baratz suggested that the outcome of these changes would mean that the company would have to pass the ongoing definition of the platform to ISO. Baratz suggested that Sun wanted to retain some control over the language it piloted. We invested money and effort in the ISO process, Baratz said, Sun was a little naive…then we saw Microsoft spending several million dollars to block the initiative. He concluded that commercial companies are unlikely to use this process in the future.
If Sun does abandon its PAS submission, it is not necessarily the victory for Microsoft which it might seem. Although Microsoft has long fought Sun’s right to use the PAS process as a vehicle for Java standardization, Sun may be in a better position to retain control over the future of Java through its newly-created Java community license model. Sun CEO, Scott McNealy has always maintained that Sun should retain stewardship of Java, and even Sun’s biggest Java ally privately admits such a move wouldn’t come as a shock.
