IBM director of e-business standards strategy Bob Sutor is one of a handful of people at Big Blue who have a say in the company's policies regarding standards, open source, and Web services. One Web services technology that he wants to see open-sourced, and subsequently turned into a standard, is Sun's Java.

Java is many things to many people. Summed up in one sentence, it's a series of more than 190 specifications called Java Specification Requests (JSRs) that cover Java's implementation in everything from virtual machine-based application servers for enterprises (J2EE) to the desktop virtual machine (J2SE) to the commonly deployed CGI-like routines (servlets) used to interface those virtual machines with outside applications such as a Web server.

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The fate of those JSRs lies with the working groups that make up the Java Community Process (JCP), an organization of hundreds of vendors. Although run by Sun, the JCP follows a largely democratic process; vendors involved in each of the JSRs (and the vendor list varies from one JSR to the next) have a lot of freedom to take those JSRs in whatever direction they see fit. For example, Sun leaves most development decisions for the many mobile Java specifications to companies like Nokia, Ericsson, and Motorola, who are in the best position to determine what Java in a cell phone needs to look like.

But despite the JCP's democratic look-and-feel, Sun, which owns the patents to Java, still retains veto power. Also, Sun's intellectual property stake in the technology allows the company to connect other requirements to Java and to those who want to profit from it. First and foremost of those are licensing fees that Sun collects from vendors who attach the Java brand to their products (i.e.: IBM's WebSphere or BEA's WebLogic). The actual fees that Sun charges to those vendors are one of the IT industry's best-kept secrets. Sun refuses to disclose what it charges Java licensees, and the licensees never tell.

But evidence suggests that not everyone pays the same price. Sources familiar with the licensing schedule say the players involved with the mobile JSRs pay more than vendors in the other JSRs, perhaps due to the prevalence of devices like cell phones. Oracle is rumored to have cut a sweetheart deal in exchange for pulling out of an IBM-led organization (openserver.org) that Sun perceived to be a threat to the Java brand. (Oracle's withdrawal from that effort precipitated that group's collapse.)

Compatibility requirement
Another requirement that Sun has attached to Java is compatibility. In order to benefit from the Java brand--a brand whose portability is based on a write-once, run-anywhere promise--the JSRs include compatibility tests that the various vendors' implementations (like IBM's WebSphere) must pass before they can claim to be certifiably Java compliant. In addition to the fees that licensees must pay, Sun also makes money on the compliance testing. In my interview with Sun's chief engineer Rob Gingell, Gingell joked about how it takes a rocket scientist to run these tests. Currently, most of those rocket scientists work for Sun. You get the picture.

So, when Sutor told me earlier this year that IBM wanted to see Java enter the public domain, the reasons seemed obvious. Any Java licensee, licensee-to-be, or licensee-wannabe would want to see Java in the public domain just to eliminate Sun's licensing and testing fees. Still, whatever IBM pays, it's probably a drop in the bucket for the technology giant. Perhaps another reason is Sun's veto power. I wonder whether, at some point, the JCP's so-called democratic process failed IBM. Maybe Big Blue requested specific changes to certain Java specifications (like J2EE), only to have them vetoed by Sun. Or maybe it's the prospect of a future veto that has IBM worried. With so much of its future riding on Java, Sun could play its veto card for no other reason than to stick it to IBM.

If any of these perfectly acceptable reasons for IBM wanting Java to be in the public domain were indeed IBM's reasons, Sutor wasn't going to admit it. Says Sutor: "IBM absolutely loves Java. We think we've done more work than anybody else on the planet in terms of Java's reliability and performance to make it enterprise ready. Moving forward, we want to be constructive. We don't want to get into a fight [with Sun] over this. We just think the whole way that Java is standardized can be done better. So, we're willing to use Sun's words to get this to happen."

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