As Its Power Rises, Sun Coming Around to Microsoft’s Style

SAN FRANCISCO — Two major conferences took place last week for people who write the computer programs that help drive the technology economy, and it was fitting that they were a continent apart.

In Orlando, Fla., at an annual event for developers of programs to run on Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating systems, Bill Gates told 11,000 attendees that Microsoft would spend $2 billion to spur the design of new applications.

At the same time, 25,000 programmers were assembled in San Francisco for the fifth-annual JavaOne conference, hosted by Microsoft archfoe Sun Microsystems Inc., the Silicon Valley computer hardware powerhouse that invented the Java computer language in 1995.

They were welcomed by Sun Chief Executive Scott McNealy, who walked onstage at the Moscone Convention Center to the strains of “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” a wry reference to last week’s order by a federal judge that Microsoft be split into two companies.

McNealy reeled off Java’s accomplishments so far: more than 2.5 million developers work in the language, it is required course work in half of U.S. college computer science departments, and it is increasingly popular for big-business applications.

What McNealy didn’t say is that as the language has matured, Sun has gained power while Microsoft has stumbled, and the drive behind Java has changed as well.

Java is a computer language designed to let programs written in its code run on any operating system, including Microsoft’s Windows, Sun’s Solaris, Linux or any other rivals.

The Java system was inspired by a selfless zeal to create a way for programs to run on any system. But increasingly, programmers say, Sun is beginning to control the system more in keeping with Microsoft’s style.

Certainly, Java has helped Sun maintain its claim as an Internet leader by making sure that some outside programmers would write applications for Sun’s workstations and computer network servers. Although Sun doesn’t dominate the market for those servers, it does well among companies who use large servers to operate major Web sites.

Sun’s market share for mid-range computer servers--those that cost $100,000 to $1 million--has climbed from 10% in 1997 to 17.8% in 1999, behind Hewlett-Packard and IBM, according to International Data Corp. Sun’s share of the highest-priced machines has gone from nothing to about 10%.

Java was improved through collaboration, following the tradition of “open source” programming, as opposed to Microsoft’s closed system, which keeps its code proprietary.

But in the last several years, as Java became one of the fastest-growing programming languages, other parts of the technology world were changing just as rapidly.

As Microsoft weakened under attack from Java and the Justice Department, Linux burst on the scene and became a real, competing operating system. Linux’s development is still overseen by Linus Torvalds, and so far the free software is only for sophisticated users.

The arrival of Linux gave those in opposition to Microsoft something to do that was more of a direct assault on Microsoft’s core product, rather than just working on Java programs.

Finally, Sun angered many in the open-source community by dragging its feet on a long-promised plan to let the standards for Java be controlled by an international impartial panel, instead of by Sun.

And many attending the Java conference agreed that the thrill is gone.

“It started out as more of a missionary kind of thing,” said Ilham Ahmed, chief technology officer at a New York e-business firm that specializes in writing Java programs. “Now it’s more practical: Today I might be on this operating system, tomorrow I might be on another.”

Sun finally dropped the plan for an outside Java standards body late last year and said it would continue to oversee Java itself. The pullback puts Sun in an awkward position with some of the biggest contributors to the Java effort, including IBM, which has called for a standards body, and Hewlett-Packard.

Sun also wants to charge other companies for their use of the Java brand and for the right to say their biggest programs are compatible with Java. So far, IBM and some others have refused.

Indeed, McNealy, Sun Chief Scientist Bill Joy and others at the conference sounded less like preachers and more like businessmen than they have in the past.

The executives made a deliberate pitch to developers that Java could make them rich. Sun software chief Pat Sueltz asked to see hands raised by those in the audience who were motivated by money (few hands went up), and the after-hours entertainment featured Ben Stein and a live version of television’s “Win Ben Stein’s Money.”

So if JavaOne was still a world apart from Microsoft’s developer conference, it is a world that appears to be shrinking.