Java on BeOS, supported by Sun

John Kenneth Grytten writes "Be and Sun have announced that they will be working together to bring Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition and PersonalJava to BeOs." They expect to have betas ready by the end of the year, with shipping versions going out 1Q 2000.

What about Java on Linux?

This is fantastic, but what would be really great is if Sun could release a stable, working JDK 1.2 for Linux. Unfortunately the Blackdown port of the Sun JDK is far from production quality -- it is rife with problems, especially with respect to native threading.

This isn't to knock the Blackdown team -- they have done a terrific job. But doing such a port really is a lot of work, maybe too much for a closed porting team. If we could open up the porting process and let those of us with different systems really bang on it, I'm sure things would be progressing much more rapidly.

Matt Welsh

Great... If they deliver.

That's great, if they actually deliver. Let's look at Sun's record lately, shall we? In the past year or so, Sun have promised the following (that I remember):

• Java 2 for Linux
  
• Source to Solaris
  
• Source to StarOffice
  

I'm not aware that they have delivered on any of them. Have they actually /delivered/ a line of code under the SCSL? Whatever you think of the SCSL, Sun's record on delivering promises is not too hot.

Sun internal politics won't allow it

Don't forget that Sun think that they're in a difficult position because of the Linux vs Solaris issue, so inevitably there will be internal pressure from some of their divisions *not* to help out the Linux scene too much. In contrast, adding value to little ol' Be holds no danger for them.

In reality of course, assuming that they really make no money from Solaris as the rumours suggest, their best bet is probably to GPL the entirety of Solaris and to support all free operating systems equally on their nice hardware. Unfortunately, internal politics may not allow that --- the Solaris empires within Sun are far too deeply entrenched in the internal political mechanisms of the company. A pity.