Future of Java

Question

By Oracle acquiring Sun/Java, do you think it will affect future of Java? I do not think Oracle can focus on Java. What is your take on this?

Jiteendra Sampathirao · Answer

Hi all, Oracle acquired Sun in 2009....then no big things are came from oracle......so it definitely added advantage to MS technologies.. If you have look it on MS technologies, WCF,WPF,SILVERLIGHT, Windows azure, MVC, Sharepoint 2007 and 2010 etc. were came from MS hands.... But i hope Oracle has its plans....and Java is also popular as MS technologies these days.....

Sam Hobbs · Answer

The worst case is if Oracle does not make much money from Java, either directly or indirectly, or if they think they cannot and they also don't want to release ownership of it. If they expect to make money, then of course they will not do anything to threaten that. They are not foolish. If they do not expect to make money, then perhaps they will release it as a public standard (like C# and the CLI is) that is available to other organizations to implement in new ways, such as what Microsoft did and was legally prevented from offering. I have heard no rumors of a native operating system for Java, but based on the way that other things are going, it seems logical for something like that to be done for Java. Whatever happens, Java won't die soon. The world is not as simple as we would like it to be.

Mahesh Chand · Answer

Good feedback guys. I wonder what Oracle has in mind? Larry (Oracle's CEO) is always looking for different ways to make money. He does not give anything free :)

Vulpes · Answer

My personal view is that this is likely to lead to a decrease in the use of Java in future. Oracle's stewardship of the language will be far tougher than Sun's was and they'll want to make as much money as they can out of it. For proof of this, you only need to look at the lawsuit between Oracle and Google over the latter's use of (an admittedly modified) Java in its Android operating system. Whether Oracle win this or not, it's bound to make other commercial and open source Java developers nervous about using the language and they may start looking for alternatives which are truly 'free'. However, unless they decide to hand it over entirely to the 'open source' community, I don't think that .NET is likely to be a beneficiary of a reduction in Java usage because Java developers will probably trust Microsoft even less than Oracle! A more likely outcome is a resurgence in use of C++ which isn't controlled by any IT giant and which is getting a new lease of life from the imminent release of a new standard.

Abhimanyu K Vatsa · Answer

I also think same. Actually this is very-very big marketing game that at-least I can't understand. A big question for me is "why Oracle acquire Sun?". Maybe, Oracle will be planning to come in market with something big. But for now, I don't think oracle will focus on Java. Android and iPhones can be example here. This is my own take. What's your?