Java Industry News

At a two-day event held in Hyderabad to educate Java developers on how to build better solutions, James Gosling, CTO of Sun's developer platforms group, said that Java developers in India "are doing everything from enterprise software development to writing software for banks, manufacturing, and cell phones."

There are about 300,000 Java developers in India, according to Gosling, which represents almost 50 percent of the total developer population.

"The community has taken up areas such as embedded computing," he explained, and Java has spread in enterprise computing. Also people prefer Java in mobile devices, he added, since "nobody likes it if a mobile device looks like a desktop with Windows-like features."

"I consider Java to be a community rather than a product of Sun," Gosling declared. When asked about the open-sourcing Java issue, he replied:

"It is already extraordinarily open. People who use our software can modify and develop a new version. But any company that modifies and develops something new in order to sell to a third party needs a license. We look at licensing as a revenue model."

"We make all our sources freely available," he continued. "But for your modifications, our licence requires that it undergo a test. Redistribution is possible only if they pass the test. Some people are grumpy about this, but mostly developers are happy."

Asked what we might expect from Java in 2005, Gosling said:

"The next version of Java will address the requirements of technology applications from enterprise to wireless computing. We are evaluating class inheritance and delegation models to determine which one is better. The new version will have a wide range of classes for Web-based applications, network services, and support operations such as online shopping and reservations. Web services are important; what protocol we use is secondary, but building the Web infrastructure is important."

Gosling in an interview given while in India conceded that "As far as Java’s existence is concerned, 10 years from now it may not be there."

"But I would like to see the next development either based on Java or influenced by it," he said - and 300,000 Indian Java developers, one might guess, probably agree with him.