Ellison Praises Sun's Open Source Language At JavaOne

It would be hard to see the same scene taking place between McNealy and top executives of IBM, who helped establish Java in the business world but competed effectively with Sun for the Unix market and encouraged the rapid adoption of Linux in the enterprise. Some of that adoption took place at the expense of Sun's Solaris. Tensions ran high between the two companies through the 1990s as IBM sought to play a role in Java's future, while Sun dragged its feet on establishing an international Java standard.

A combined Sun and Oracle will command one of the largest R&D budgets in the world, in the range of $5 billion to $6 billion, McNealy noted.

Despite the camaraderie, however, Sun's future as part of Oracle is laced with uncertainty. Oracle is heavily committed to software objectives based on a new proprietary line of applications and supporting middleware. Sun's business still contains a large hardware component of UltraSparc servers and storage, plus a long list of open source code products for which it sells support. Oracle has offered open source code such as BerkeleyDB and InnoDB as alternatives to fill in holes that aren't covered by its commercial product lines.

Oracle is in a contest for market share with SAP and looking to use its application's Java underpinnings for competitive advantage. Its commitment to Sun's open source code products, such as the MySQL database and GlassFish Application Server, isn't clear at this point. Neither company can comment on product plans until the acquisition is complete, company officials said.

Schwartz announced that Sun will soon open an online store for consumers offering Java applications for telephones, netbooks, and PCs. The consumer store is in private beta and is scheduled to have a public beta this summer. The store is being built with Java business logic and a JavaFX user interface. It will have advanced, user-friendly features; for example, a visitor needs only to roll his mouse over an icon and a pop-up will appear explaining its function or simulation of how to drag the icon to the desktop space to activate it.

A second online store has been established for Java developers at java.sun.com/warehouse.

Gosling, in a programmer's uniform of T-shirt and blue jeans, came on stage, stared out at the full auditorium, and acknowledged, "We were nervous about how many people would show up," after Sun's acquisition was announced April 20. As a reward for coming, he used a giant slingshot to shoot half a dozen T-shirts into the audience, something he's expected to do at each JavaOne.

InformationWeek Analytics is seeking insight into enterprise use of technologies like data deduplication and tiered storage. Take part in our survey by June 5 and let us know. Upon completion, you'll be eligible to enter a drawing to receive one Apple 16-GB iPod Touch valued at $299.