IP: Re: Java Loses Netscape

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

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










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