Blogger: JP Morgenthal
Having worked years in the software industry, I'm hesitant to attack software company executives' comments because there's usually some meat behind their statements. But, I was reading the following article by Stephen Shankland at CNET, "With JavaFX, Sun seeks new coders, new revenue." and all I could think is the pressure is getting to Jonathan Schwartz of Sun. I kept reading waiting for the punchline or at least a glimpse of how far gone he is, such as "we expect Skynet to be our biggest customer", but no such luck.
Here's some of the really questionable quotes:
- But Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz, despite Sun's dropping revenue, low stock price, and large new layoff, believes that JavaFX will overcome its obstacles.
Perhaps, but this would top Microsoft Excel overtaking Lotus 123 as the greatest comeback in software history. While I understand the reasoning behind JavaFX Script, it has nothing to do with Java, doesn't leverage Sun's existing base of developers on the Java platform and is proprietary when they could have used an established dynamic programming language. At least I can code C# in Silverlight.
- "We're more relevant today than any other software developer on the face of the Earth."
I'll leave this one as an exercise to the reader to analyze.
- "The problem with browsers, when viewed as the default mechanism for delivering content for the Web, is that browsers have become hostile territory," Schwartz argued. "Internet Explorer is owned by Microsoft. Firefox is owned by Google, at this point. Chrome is owned by Google. Beyond that, with maybe (the exception) of Safari, which is owned by Apple, there is no safe route to distribute your content into the marketplace."
Granted, there's still issues with CSS support, but compatibility across browsers continues to get better because developers are demanding it and because Firefox and Webkit are focused on superb industry-standard implementations that many users point to as reference implementations. Moreover, the minor nuances are not getting in the way of building rich application interfaces.
And, yes, Google has made a large contribution to the Mozilla Foundation, but it doesn't own the extremely large base of developers that have contributed to Firefox or it's ecosystem. Mozilla's Chief also maintains a strong stance that Google does not influence Mozilla's direction in a proprietary direction and will seek alternate financing if that ever became the case. Regardless, there's no basis to represent the Mozilla community as being 'owned' by Google.
In the race for the one stop shop for rich user experience, across mobile and desktop platforms, in my opinion, JavaFX is the horse in last place, with one of it's shoes falling off and an overweight jockey.
Schwartz's comment about browsers being owned makes him sound incredibly paranoid. Very strange comment from a CEO.
Posted by: John | December 05, 2008 at 08:41 PM