Sun Microsystems Inc. has decided to drop its effort to get Java standardized by the International Standards Organization (ISO).
During the launch of Sun's enterprise version of Java here at the Java Business Conference, Sun Software Products and Platforms President Pat Sueltz told an audience the company will not resubmit Java to the European Computer Manufacturer's Association (ECMA).
During a meeting last month with an ECMA technical committee, Sun pulled specifications for Java off the table after copyright issues surfaced but was scheduled to resubmit last week. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Sun turned Java over to the ECMA in April to get on a fast track toward ISO approval.
Sueltz said Sun will remain the guardian of Java compatibility.
"We are steadfast about controlling the compatibility but not about controlling technology, not about stopping innovation," Sueltz said. "We just want to make sure that we continue to drive the process of compatibility from the largest server to the smallest embedded device in all of this industry."
Earlier Tuesday Sun Chairman and Chief Executive Scott McNealy told a crowd of developers that the problem with standards bodies is that they can be influenced by the "dark side."
ECMA members working on Java standards include Sun rivals Microsoft Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co., which have been uncooperative with Sun concerning the embedded version of Java. Microsoft and HP are also members of an ECMA subcommittee that has threatened to move ahead with Java standards with or without Sun's involvement.
"Standards organizations are very political processes that need money to run and sometimes their constituencies change," McNealy said. "There are times when . . . things have to be moved at the speed of light and there are times when we need flexibility. We're not moving Java forward in a secret way, in a non-participative way."
The company is actually losing money on Java, he said.
Whether Sun's abandonment of ECMA opens the door for an alternative ISO standards effort for Java remains to be seen, said George Paolini, vice president of Sun's Java Community Development. "As far as we can tell, the true process for evolving the standard is the Java Community Process," Paolini said.
Sueltz, in her eighth week on the job at Sun, said that while serving as general manager of IBM Corp.'s Java Software division, she believed the standards process was necessary.
"I was not easily converted to the idea," she claimed, but was impressed by Sun's "passionate" desire to move the technology forward unencumbered by the standards process.
Meanwhile, Java developers and analysts are mixed on the importance of ISO standards for Java.
Max Grasso, chief technology officer of Boston-based integrator Netnumina Solutions, has said earlier that Sun's Community Source Licensing program is good enough as far as standards go.
"People are concerned that [improvements] would get slow with a standardized process," Grasso said. "We are happy that Sun hasn't given Java to ISO."
Anne Thomas, an analyst with Boston-based Patricia Seybold Group, said the fact that Java is already a de facto standard is good enough for the industry. "I don't even think the standards process is really quite so critical now as it was two years ago."
Others feel safer with standards.
Spokespeople from Santa Clara, Calif.-based Internet bill management company CyberBills Inc. have said that ISO standards are important because too many entities still rely on them before officially adopting technology.
Sun on Tuesday also launched the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) for building E-commerce, enterprise resource planning, application server and other enterprise software applications.
Binary code for J2EE supporting Solaris and Windows NT operating systems will be available on Sun's Web site late next week, the company said. Meanwhile, J2EE source code will be available under Sun's Community Source Licensing Program next month.
