By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes,
Open, locks, whoever knocks.


Lyall Watson quoting William Shakespeare,
Dark Nature, 1996

Java is the cleverest attempt at a Trojan horse yet. The Netscape browser grabs screen real estate, sort of like grabbing shelf space in the local supermarket, and Java delivers the goods right into the heart of Microsoft territory and breaks their lock on the desktop. No wonder Bill Gates announced a counterattack on Pearl Harbor Day last December. Internet World dresses him up as a WWII General and outlines his strategy in the March, 1996 article, "Microsoft Declares War."

Gates portrays Microsoft as the suffering, innocent, American people while Netscape is billed as an unfeeling Japanese air strike on Pearl Harbor. I wanted to check out the strength of the Axis forces so I headed for the "First Java Development Conference" in San Jose.

Here I am at 8:55 am on Tuesday, 20 February 1996, in the San Jose Civic Center. About 30 people here at the "First Java Development Conference" and 1,000 empty seats. I guess everyone is tied up at Internet Expo registration like I was. Having made the mistake of preregistering and getting a prepaid invoice, my data was not in the computer, so after getting sent three different places and talking to five people at the San Jose Convention Center, I finally got a badge. Sigh!

Mellow rock music is playing and color posters of a guy doing handstands on the rim of a coffee cup are on the stage. Two mega-projection devices show, of all things, the Windows 95 screen saver with spinning computer chips. A symbolic statement that Microsoft owns the desktop while Java is the underdog challenger.

Darth Vader
is in the eye
of the beholder

Netscape and Java, they need each other. And the rest of the computer industry needs them to survive in a world dominated by Microsoft. Sun's hype about Java has reached new heights of historical revisionism, says Robert Weisblatt in a recent letter to the editor of Wired magazine. As a member of the Java team at Sun, Robert watched Bill Joy try to kill Java, and heard Eric Schmidt say it would never amount to anything.

" [Wired] states that Eric Schmidt and Bill Joy told [the Java team] to redirect its efforts toward the Internet. This is such an Orwellian rewriting of history that it is beyond all reason. Just a short time earlier Joy was exclaiming that Oak [the code word for Java] was dead because the language implementers wouldn't redesign it to take on C++. And Schmidt… Oh, boy. Schmidt, the internet visionary, is one of the people who wanted to charge groups at Sun US$50 per person to use Mosaic because it was such a pointless waste of time and had nothing to do with Sun's business." Robert Weisblatt, Wired 4.03

Robert says the core of the Sun Java team, having already experienced the Sun massacre of NeWS, threatened to quit en masse to get Sun to let them adapt Java to the internet. The Sun management team caved in and the rest is history. And three of the top people on the Java team bolted to startup their own company as soon as they could deliver Release 1.0 of the Java SDK.

Joy and Schmidt recently saw the light, found religion, and developed a passion for Java. They say it was really their idea all along. They say it was really their idea all along and it's the key to diverting thousands of software developers away from Microsoft Windows into the Netscape/Java axis. Software developers are the teeming masses of computerdom and when they all move to one side of the ship, the whole industry is threatened with massive upset.

Is this Java thing an evil plot of Axis forces (a la Gates) or the rise of a new American populism to overthrow the evil empire (Microsoft)? It depends on who you talk to -- Darth Vader is in the eye of the beholder. I sent a note to Robert Weisblatt last night asking for some more information and received an error message back from the Sun server. "No such person at this address!" I guess the management team took care of Weisblatt.

Well, enough of the preliminaries. We are almost a half an hour late getting started waiting for the Civic Center to fill up. "We are still waiting for our first speaker to show. We know he's on his way, but we don't know where he's at," says the stage hand.

Dennis Tsu comes on as the warmup act. He's the Director of Internet Product Marketing for Sun Microsystems, Inc. the mother company of the Java subsidiary. SunSoft will provide development environments for Java and supporting application tools. Dennis Tsu is part of the hardware company and he is using Microsoft Powerpoint to show us where Java is going! Microsoft still has him by the family jewels and he doesn't like it.

Why are we doing this Java thing?

"What is Java and where is it going?" asks Dennis. It is going to change the way people do network based computing. But I'm going to leave further discussion of that to Eric Schmidt, the Sun Chief Technology Officer. What I want to tell you know is where we are with Java.

Why are we doing this Java thing? We believe the Internet is going to change the way people compute over the next decade. My kids are already better at surfing the net than my wife is (is this a sly sexist remark?). There are more people on the net every day than watch CNN. The number of households that can log on is about the same as the number of B&W televisions in 1950 and we expect the same explosion in growth.

The internet revolution is not just in the US. Two-thirds of the people in the world today will never touch a telephone or see a computer, but they will see the internet. The opportunity to grow over the next several decades worldwide is really immense. We want to start today in a way that will level the playing field. There is a little company in Redmond that has a lock on the desktop and our strategy with Java is to unlock Microsoft's territory.

Java gives us live applications, not just static data. Clients are smart -- instant response. Write once, run anywhere! The network becomes the distribution vehicle for sofware applications. It is secure, compact, platform-independent, eliminates porting, eliminates end-user installation, slashes software distribution costs, and will allow you to reach millions of customers instantly. (His heavy breathing leaves me breathless)

Dennis switches midstream to discussion of the $500 computer. It is not going to replace the PC. The small Java computers that Sun is building are vertical market devices for specialized purposes. The health care industry wants to eliminate replicated databases by tying all the docs, nurses, and medical records personel to the Internet.

The really important thing about Java is that it's free! 99% of the world's developers can access Java without even contacting Sun. And there is a lot of support. There is the First Annual Java Developers Conference-- May '96. Java Applet store, newsgroups, newsletter, bulletin boards, … are coming. You can license the source for the compiler to imbed Java into various devices for a nominal fee. We are doing JavaScript with Netscape.

We are positioning Java as the best language for Network based Programming. We need your help as developers. (Use Java instead of that Windows stuff.)

Lots of people are already using Java. Financial services -- live data feeds, secure trades. Retail, advertising-interactive 3D, animated content, streaming audio. Publishing, entertainment-live data, instant infomration, customizing on the fly. MIS-mission critical applications, web-based data-access, 3270 applet internal to Sun. Education -- remote learning, interactive simulations.

Lots of Java books and support are out there. On May 29-31, Sun will have its first three-day Java developers conference. There are several others (Netscape, Oracle) between now and then, but save your money and go to ours. There will be some hard core propeller heads and some good business people there as well. Sun is hiring instructors for Java as fast as they can find them. Sun University is hiring trainers and offering courses in Java. As fast as courses are up, they are subscribed. Sun has a three to five month backlog right now. Will work with any third party on developing more training courses.

There are over 1000 applets in the Java Cup competition right now. 25% are entertainment, one-third business, and the rest utilities. Go to Gamelot on the Web to get applets. Java SDK 1.0 is shipping on Solaris, Win95/NT. Sun is working on Macintosh. Many other ports are under way. We are continuing development on HotJava and will provide if free! We are not trying to compete with Netscape. We want licensees to develop applications on this.

Java will enable the intranet to take off says Gartner Group in October of 1995, while Microsoft White Paper in December of 1995 says "The Internet-Just Another Name for Client-Server Computing." 20% of the Sun servers in operation now are intra- or internet servers. We expect that number to be 80% by 1998.

Is Eric, our keynote speaker here? Not here? How about some questions… Questions fly fast and furious. Answers come like machine gun bullets from the podium. By the time the warmup act is done, the place is filling up. This stuff looks like the hottest thing than Sun has got. If this keeps up, Eric the Revisionist will walk on the stage like a rock star.

Dennis says that what Sun is trying to do is see 100,000,000 Java seats out there by the end of 1998. They cannot all be on Sun workstations. The Sun-conscious strategy is to move with the changing business model. If you have something hot, the right thing to do is give it away free. Then we will sell you millions of upgrades later (lots of laughs). We want to create a new desktop paradigm and provide the distribution mechanism.

A Denver Fortune 500 company is looking at Java in the server environment. The applet is generated by the client and sent to the server to search databases. Intelligent agents is the concept. Java's ubiquity will finally allow this to take off and SQL database search is hot.

Yes, we are doing set-top boxes. We have seen a cellular phone that accesses the internet with Java. Simple applications can have real value on small screens, like directory assistance.

"Is this conference for the Java literate or the Java idiot," asks a member of the audience. This morning is the idiot level (marketing) and this afternoon will be for the literate. We need to remember that internet years are like dog years. It's hard to keep up. There are many internet years in each human year. Even the idiot version will give you vertigo.

"OK," says Dennis. "I saw Mr. Schmidt. Where is he? Two seconds. He's coming! I see Mr. Schmidt here. Are we ready to roll? No, slides are not ready yet."

More questions. Is there anything special to do with the server side to support Java. For a basic Java server, no. To serve out applets and catch applets as well, there is a lot of work. Many companies are working on this.

Let's take a five-minute break before we welcome Eric (big applause). More rock music. Chills up and down my spine. Is this stuff hot or what? There is energy in the room. Lust for sprinkling Java applets on those 100,000,000 desktops is palpable along with the heavy scent of greed.

Eric Schmidt,
Chief Technology Officer
of Sun, arrives

The general of the Netscape/Java axis forces runs onstage to wild applause.

Eric takes a deep breath and launches into his pitch like rolling thunder moving over the Western plains. "The Internet has just begun to tear at the fabric of our lives. Governments are threatened. Providers are colluding like the early railroad barons (illegally) to set up clouds on the network. There is dark fiber everywhere and the barriers to entry are almost non-existent.

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes...


"The Internet was designed to withstand a nuclear war! Do you think that governments can stop it? Censorship is a bug and the internet routes around it. Do you think that $5 and $10 routers will not be used everywhere?"

It is Netscape and its friends vs. Microsoft at its power -- and Microsoft doesn't need any friends! The roar of assent from the audience gives Eric a messianic charge. What is going to happen (Eric chokes up) is the Pepsi and Coke of browsers will do everything they can to gain marketshare! Microsoft has one thing nobody else has. They can give everything away free for the next 20 years. There is nothing wrong with the internet that a little Word, a little Excel, and a little Powerpoint won't fix. But they can't do that forever!!"

Wow, this is better than the Presidential primary campaign in New Hampshire that I've been hearing all week on the radio. Real David and Goliath stuff. The audience is on the edge of its collective seat!

"We are on a Paradigm Roller Coaster--the challenging paradigm is born as small, simple, scalable effort, not a corporate initiative. The existing paridigm is OS Lock!" Bill Gates did a brilliant exploitation of a poor operating system. Differentiation is complete. No one is confused about whether they have a PC or a Mac.

The Web Revolution is to break that OS lock! Eric is making me feel like DOS is a chastity belt, and Windows 95 only put sequins on it.

Something wicked this way comes...


and every developer in the house
wants to get out and be free!


Open locks, whoever knocks!



"We will have standardized, universal interface to data with graphical representation. We have a broadcast capability-publish once, reach millions! The Web is the universal interface to the world's digitial library. What do I use the browser for in the office -- stock quotes. That's what most people use it for at work. Either that or sports stories." Eric is a little schizophrenic. Will the revisionist reveal his real stripes? No, he doesn't skip a beat.

George Gilder said, "Your computer will never be the same… No longer will the programs in your machine detemine the functions you can perform. The network is the computer. The computer becomes a peripheral to the internet and the Web."

HTML is a terrible design. You would get a F for it in school. Every company on the planet is now trying to fix it. Think of it as DOS for the 90s. DOS won with no redeeming value whatsover! (Thunderous applause. Religious fervor is building.) DOS 2 was worse. DOS 3 was better. Norton came along and gave us utilities which built an empire. Fixing that which has ubiquity is the central issue.


This stuff is so hot,
Sun just wants us
to send them
all our ideas for free

The new paradigm is -- store the programs somewhere else. Put them all on the server. Lower costs. A Windows 3.1 PC costs $41K to support over a 5-year period. With Win95 the cost goes down to $36K. Java will cut this outrageous cost dramatically. Eric doesn't say how much, but a vision of $3K floats through my mind.

Distribution and network costs are going to zero for software. What do you charge for it? Software goes to lease model and AOL becomes a leasing company. Oracle is building a Java competitor to Microsoft Office.

Sun's Java small device is being produced in small amounts and tested with customers. Early returns are favorable. It costs more than $500 right now.

The software business model is inverted by Java. Today we have platform lockin, dead content, big applications. Tomorrow we will have a simple OS, component-based, small applications, live content. A cellular phone has 40MIP chip! Soon it will be a TC/IP node. We will run out of IP addresses by year 2000. A new IP assignment mechanism allows 131M addresses per sq/meter, enough to support the most outrageous nerd. And we can extend beyond that.

Eric is building to his climax.

"You can help. Send us an implementation of your data or communications standard." Eric exits to wild applause. This stuff is so hot, Sun just wants us to send them all our ideas for free. They will give us Java free. With free stuff everywhere on 100,000,000 desktops, the upgrade opportunities become astronomic! Breathing heavily, I look around the audience. The guys with the feverish sweat on their brows are probably VC's, or maybe they're the arms merchants of the coming internet wars. Lust, greed, vengeance, caffeine addiction -- it might be a winning combination. It's certain to lead to road kill on the information highway.

More rock music. More chills! Cool Java demos that talk, sing, and play guitars. You can play along with it by tapping your keyboard. Programming doesn't suck anymore. A deep chord is struck in the gut of the development community.

Open locks, whoever knocks!



Give me Java, Java. More Java!

Next week: Report from the Allied Forces in Redmond, WA.

Jeff Sutherland



This monthly newsletter is a publication of homepage.inc, an association next meeting October, 1996 in Orlando, Florida. Entire contents © 1996 by OneMind, Rowayton, CT. All rights reserved.