Q & A Session with Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green

Very cool, Jonathan Schwartz was right behind my seat and I didn't even see him. Steve Olson just joined me, so we are going to listen to Rich and Jonathan together. Jonathan is talking about the the minimal foot print for GlassFish and how it can now run on a phone (GF v3). Jonathan and Rich are doing everything they can to remove all obstructions. There was an old saying at Sun, "Innovation happens elsewhere" and they want to foster innovation. They want to breakdown barriers and foster innovation. Investors keep asking Jonathan why Sun keeps giving away their ideas and an engineer @ Sun said they are not afraid of running out of ideas. Question about convergence, OSGi vs Java Modules, etc. Rich could not really answer the question but he did say, if we use late binding for the implementation, we can then decide on the right solution at deployment and not have to make a decision @ development. Editorial comment: I'm not sure how viable this suggestion really is. Companies that handle really large volumes of data cannot wait till later to chose the technology but I'm many applications will be able to leverage this type of architecture or development style. Jonathan talked about the choice to Open Source their software and how he sees the value Sun provides. If you are self-sufficient (as most are) you shouldn't have to pay for SW, however, if it is important for you to have immediate support when something goes down or you don't want to support it yourself, Sun can provide support and that is where the value is. The more open the more folks can innovate, so Sun is really moving towards the real revenue. Sun isn't Costco, they are not interested in bulk, they are interested in innovation. In a sense, they don't have a plan, that is to day you cannot plan innovation, it happens but you can plan for and create an environment that fosters innovation.