Sun Launches Linux Community On Java.net
The community, an addition to Sun's Java.net developer site, is aimed at helping Java developers build and deploy applications on Linux. Free software tools and other developer resources will be offered at the site, said Sanjay Sarathy, director of developer programs at Sun.
At the show this week, Sun, Santa Clara, Calif., also announced that it is expanding its plans to support Linux throughout its various developer tools. Sun will deliver its Java Creator rapid application development tool, formerly called Project Rave, in the middle of the year on Linux, as well as Windows and Solaris, Sarathy said. Java Creator is designed to help developers rapidly assemble Java applications through drag-and-drop interfaces.
In addition, Sun is expected to ship its enterprise-scale Java integrated development environment (IDE), Java Studio Enterprise, on Linux and Solaris in the second quarter of this year. Additionally, the vendor will release versions of its native Fortran, C and C++ tools, currently available on Solaris, for Linux in the second half of 2004, Sarathy said.
Sun has been criticized in the past for being the last major hardware and Unix vendor to back Linux, after IBM and Hewlett-Packard began cutting into Sun's Unix-based server business by delivering Linux on low-end servers. But since August 2002 when Sun formally began a strategy to support Linux, the company has launched both server and software offerings for Linux, even releasing a Linux-based desktop OS, the Java Desktop System.
Sun's other major software suite, the Java Enterprise System, also will be available on Linux this year, though later than the company originally announced. In December, Sun Executive Vice President of Software Jonathan Schwartz said JES would ship for Linux in January, but executives said this week the product now is scheduled to ship midyear.
Solution providers have said it's important for Sun to offer JES, a suite of Java-based software for a per-employee price of $100 per year, on as many operating systems as possible to drum up customer support for the software stack, which could spell much-needed software revenue for Sun.
Marc Maselli, president of Needham, Mass.-based solution provider Back Bay Technologies, said for customers to recognize the value of JES' pricing, it must be ported to multiple platforms, including Linux and Windows. Otherwise, it "kills the business case" for a customer to run JES if extra time and resources are spent to engineer JES to run on an unsupported OS, he said.
In addition to supporting Solaris and Linux, Sun executives have stated their intentions to offer a version of JES for Windows sometime in 2004.