Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: Re: Java Loses Netscape
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 1998 03:22:04 -0500
X-Sender: larry () mail walltech com Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 20:49:53 -0800 To: dwiner () well com (DaveNet email) From: Larry Tesler <tesler () pobox com> Subject: Re: Java Loses Netscape Cc: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu> You can post this if you wish. Dave, There are several reasons Netscape is turning responsibility for Java over to OS platform vendors. Anti-Java forces will spin it as you did, namely, "Java didn't become the ubiquitous web content format that people widely predicted it would." But that is reading more into the situation than is warranted. The decision has been inevitable since Sun licensed the Java VM to most OS vendors two years ago. It was only a question of timing. Netscape's implementation of Java has always had incompatibilities with other implementations. Now that the OS platform VM's are maturing, customers, developers and OS vendors are better off using them than Netscape's VM. There has been outside pressure on Netscape for over a year to adopt the native platform VM's. There has recently been inside pressure as well--maintaining their own VM was expensive. They stayed with it as long as they did because some of its features were interwoven with the browser and hard to factor out. Another possible motive for choosing this point in time to remove the Java VM from their code is that they are making the sources of the browser available. There is probably Java source code that they have no right to distribute. True, Java was grossly overhyped. Still, it has become as ubiqitous as any dynamic web format around other than HTML with the so-called "JavaScript". I encounter Java-powered web pages several times a day. ActiveX, which was almost as heavily hyped, hasn't gone anywhere on the web. Larry Larry Tesler, President Personal email: tesler () pobox com Stagecast Software, Inc. Business email: tesler () stagecast com 580 College Ave. Voice: (650)354-0735 Palo Alto, CA 94306-1434 Fax: (650)354-0739 ** NEW ADDRESS/PHONE! ** Web site: http://www.stagecast.com
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