Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Oracle silent on Java independence initiative

news
Sep 21, 20102 mins

A key Oracle executive declines to comment on the effort driven by Java founder James Gosling

While Java founder James Gosling has campaigned for Oracle to place Java under the jurisdiction of an independent foundation, Oracle is declining to comment at all on the notion.

Asked about Gosling’s efforts during a press question-and-answer session at the Oracle OpenWorld conference Tuesday in San Francisco, Oracle’s Thomas Kurian, executive vice president of product development, simply declined to comment.

“I will not talk about that,” Kurian said.

Gosling has sought to hold Oracle’s feet to the fire on an effort the company supported in 2007 to have the Java Community Process become an independent, vendor-neutral standards organization. That was before Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, which had jurisdiction over Java at the time.  Oracle completed its Sun acquisition in January.

Kurian did, however, clarify Oracle’s position on the fate of JavaFX Mobile, the mobile device variant of the JavaFX rich Internet application platform founded by Sun. An Oracle official described JavaFX Mobile as being on hold Monday, but Kurian said JavaFX Mobile will not run on the CLDC (Connected Limited Device Configuration) lightweight Java Virtual Machine, but will run on other virtual machines.

Kurian touted Java capabilities and ambitions for mobile devices, stressing there are 31 times more Java-enabled mobile phones shipping every year than Apple iPhone and Google Android combined.

“I would not underestimate our capability [of] delivering a new Java platform” in this space, Kurian said.

Kurian also pledged continued support of the NetBeans open source IDE Oracle inherited from Sun.

Also, John Fowler, Oracle executive vice president of systems, said the final version of the Solaris 11 Unix OS is due next year. Oracle’s Cloud Office collaborative application suite, meanwhile, is nearing a milestone. The suite is for the Web and mobile devices.

“We’re  right on the edge of having a preview for it,” said Edward Screven, Oracle chief corporate architect.

This article, “Oracle silent on Java independence initiative,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in business technology news and get a digest of the key stories each day in the InfoWorld Daily newsletter.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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