Thursday, November 14, 2002

Healthy Competition Healthy Competition Aspects and Attributes are both Big News in java blog land currently. I'll say this about MS: one positive thing .net has done is kicked us all in our complacency, and inspired a whole raft of really excellent projects. Its great to see the number of committed java people who are out there learning from .net and adding the good bits to java. [Pushing the envelope] Totally agree. On a related note, I spotted this note on Ara's blog. Using, say, iNet you can deploy your .Net app on Java. There's projects out there to deploy your Java on .Net too. Pretty groovy stuff. I'm sure we'll see more of these bridging tools. 4:51:50 PM    comment []

trump cards up the big boy's sleeves trump cards up the big boy's sleeves: MS and IBM both have huge trump cards that they could play that would cause big ripples. here they are: MS: aggressively release the CLS, .NET framework, and .NET languages for *all* major operating systems. the UI parts probably wouldn't be ported, since their target would be server-side systems, but all the rest would be ported (including the SOAP stack, web server, transactions, etc.). they could charge for this software, just like they charge for windows, and make sure that the windows version is optimized to run better than the other platforms. this effectively neutralizes one of java's remaining differentiators, which is its portability. microsoft's mantra would become "develop on windows, deploy everywhere". IBM: release an open-source CLR, open-source compilers for both Java and C# that target the CLR with compilers for eclipse, and an open-source framework that is different from microsoft's. this neutralizes microsoft's ability to corner the marketplace for CLR-based infrastructure, and is consistent with IBM's direction of open-sourcing stuff to engage the community to combat microsoft. it also frees IBM to innovate in the language arena and accelerate the development of alternative frameworks that are better than those in the J2EE stack. my guess is that both trump cards will be played sometime during the next six months. what do you think? [what's next?] Its an interesting thought. If MS really wanted to beat Java hands down they could release it open source with a non-restrictive licence together with ensuring that it ran on all platforms and it could well be a winner - especially with their R&D and marketing budget behind it. Though MS has a large monopoly to protect and I think thats the main reason for .Net's existence - to bring developers back into the Windows and Office fold.  Sure there may well be cut down, out of date or cloned, nearly compatible versions of parts of .Net - but the latest, greatest things in .Net will always appear and work the best on Windows. So I can't see MS playing this card, though it'd be very interesting if they did. I can't see IBM ever cloning .Net either; it'll always be playing catch up and I'm sure there'd be lawsuits a plenty. 12:00:41 PM    comment []

Open Source Killer App Funding - what the?. Open Source Killer App Funding - what the?. Can you find the next Killer App by looking?. I suspect most of the low hanging fruit of the desktop software world have been been picked - or that there's so much risk of MS attacking the venture and using their monopoly to crush any competition that it'd be too hard to get sufficient funding for a truly killer app - unless its open source. James is dreaming wistfully. How many large Open Source client applications do you know, that attracted any sort of funding at all, and are still vibrant and live? Think about it carefully now boys... [rebelutionary] Mozilla, OpenOffice/StarOffice, eclipse, the Linux desktop? All got funding in one way or another. Of course open source projects don't need funding, though sometimes they do get it in some form or other.  My point wasn't meant to be about funding and open source; more that its hard to get funding for non-open source projects to compete in the desktop application space, whereas there's less of a requirement for funding if you go the open source route. The only serious competitors to MS Office (OpenOffice, StarOffice etc) and IE (Mozilla) are all open source.  I don't see this changing any time soon.  I don't think there's much competition left in the desktop software 'killer app' market of the Netscape/1-2-3 mould from traditional companies with funding requirements building commercial software, unless you go the open source route like, say, Chandler or Mozilla. Sure there's still some niches left, but they are niches, not mainstream killer apps. I guess its no suprise most companies have moved away from desktop applications and instead gone into making web-centric applications, web sites, portal software, services etc. I wonder if the term killer app is meaningful any more. Should it be solely reserved for desktop applications and office suites? Or should we consider things like google as a killer app? 9:11:48 AM    comment []

KnowNow goes Open Source KnowNow goes Open Source. Finally, I was asking them for this over two years ago! The mod_pubsub project has been established at Sourceforge, with IFindKarma leading the way. I'm sure I'll be making use of it, perhaps on this very blog. [Mark Baker, Tech Curmudgeon] This sounds groovy. So I guess apache servers can pub/sub with each other and browsers can publish using HTTP POST and receive stuff via HTTP GET. But how do browsers get information pushed to them? In a Pushlet way, via a very long blocking HTTP GET? 6:14:21 AM    comment []