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Java's 'Steve Jobs' moment in 2012?
OpenJDK: Right ideas, wrong timing
Five years after Sun Microsystems finally released Java under the GPL, Oracle has been pushing hard on the OpenJDK.
The OpenJDK project followed shortly after Sun’s open-sourcing of Java in November 2005; it’s both a free-and-open-source implementation of Java Standard Edition (Java SE).
The project has seen a fresh lease of life under Oracle, Sun's buyer, who has tempted IBM away from the Apache Software Foundation’s Harmony Java SE project and who also recruited Apple to OpenJDK. OpenJDK also has a new set of governance rules, albeit rules that hand Oracle and IBM a duopoly over ultimate control of the project and, therefore, the roadmap.
But five years after Sun let Java go, what’s the state of the platform and technology?
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Time up for Oracle's HTML5 killer?
Sun Microsystems in 2007 announced a re-imagining of GUI platform Swing with JavaFX. Swing, Sun said, had reached an architectural dead-end and need a reboot to compete on modern, Rich Internet Application (RIA) platforms.
As Sun pitched JavaFX, Adobe brought out Flex (which is based on its Flash Player plug-in) and Microsoft countered with Silverlight.
It's unfortunate that just as JavaFX 2.0 is being released, those who helped inspire it are going HTML5. Meanwhile, almost nobody uses the phrase "RIA" anymore.
Microsoft has all but sidelined Silverlight while the bell of uncertainty is tolling for Flex with Adobe's recent announcement that it is floating the Flex SDK out to the community. Adobe insists it is still behind the Flex SDK, but it seems more like a loving form of euthanasia. Adobe, meanwhile, has decided to stop development of Flash Player for mobile.
The culprit in both cases is HTML5, the next version of the web mark-up protocol that is killing closed and proprietary media stacks.
Is JavaFX - the subject of our third and final look at Java five years after Sun released it under a GPL licence - in the wrong place at the wrong time? Has it already lost and doesn't know it? Maybe not: Microsoft may have had Windows to leverage Silverlight but Adobe was the real leader thanks the the dominance of Flash and Adobe's surprise change of direction could make way for new, standards-based development tools - if Oracle can get serious on JavaFX. Delivering on its promise to open-source JavaFX might also help.