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Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

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Re: Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

#211

Post by giantrobot »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #148
ryanmccullagh wrote: post #24

Oracle had already acquired Sun by the time I was in the technology industry. The respondent states that Sun is so set on giving things away. Can someone comment on the culture of Sun at that time? Sun seems to have left a legacy in the open source community. What was the business logic on giving away the software for free? I know it's very common today, but Sun may have been a leader in open source. Any books recomm…

IMO it was a strategic move to commoditize their complement. My impression during that era was that Scott McNealy saw Microsoft (whose strength was in software) as Sun Microsystems' (whose strength was in hardware) most important competitor and took steps to stem their influence. Java was one example of a giveaway intended to create a Sun-controlled moat to protect their business. The purchase of StarOffice and its o…

Sun intended Java to be an uber-platform, to get it running on everything from tiny embedded systems to their giant E10k systems. They'd make money selling JVM licenses in various verticals.

Sun bought into Netscape's vision of the web as the delivery platform for software. Java could run on the server side and then as applets in the browser on the client. The expansion of Java would then expand its use in places Sun wanted to charge for licenses.

Java wouldn't create a moat around their hardware. It was intended to eliminate Microsoft's moat around the Windows platform. If ISVs could write software in Java that could be delivered by a browser on any OS, the actual OS stopped being important. As long as there was a browser and JVM available on a platform it could run that software.

Re: Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

#212

Post by nequo »

hnlmorg wrote: post #134
LAC-Tech wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet Explorer dominated for years. Microsoft killed Netscape not the other way around. Did they? I can remember switching from IE to netscape about 2 years before it died, and then going into whatever the precursor to FF was called.

Yes. I’m 100% sure about that :) Is there a chance you’re thinking about Opera? That didn’t kill Internet Explorer either but it was around before FireFox gained traction.

I think parent is thinking about the Mozilla Suite.[1] The browser later became Firefox.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mozilla_Application...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_early_version_history

Re: Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

#213

Post by kragen »

legobmw99 wrote: post #203
kragen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

aha, that wasn't previously the case, thanks for the correction whether i'm logged in in my browser has nothing to do with whether my ssh client has access to an authorized private key

It seems that this has been the case for years, at least going from the (obviously logged-out) archive.org saves of the Linux repo: https://web.archive.org/web/20180115003453/https://github.co...

i appreciate the additional correction; perhaps i was looking at github mostly while logged in previously

Re: Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

#214

Post by kragen »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #133
kragen wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

github just removed git: urls from their web ui so it no longer tells you how to make a clone you can push from using standard git it's been replaced with instructions for using their own gh cli tool (which, however, is also free software) for example on any github project page, https://github.com/username/projectname , click on the "code ↓" button in the top right; the "local" tab on the left has a "clone" tab with…

> embrace, extend, and extinguish is alive and well ??? you can clone Github projects and move them on every other git repository you want if Github removed the support for git, Github would be dead in a week. Not only because git is literally in their name, but because every programmer tool that deals with code (editors, IDEs, etc.) has embedded support for git, the protocol, not git the Github version of the protoc…

if www browsers had removed support for ftp, browsers would have been dead in a week, in 01998

but because they waited until last year, removing that interoperability did not significantly affect their dominance as a way of accessing the internet

Re: Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

#215

Post by kragen »

zerocrates wrote: post #78
kragen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

aha, that wasn't previously the case, thanks for the correction whether i'm logged in in my browser has nothing to do with whether my ssh client has access to an authorized private key

The heuristic for Github though is that the vast majority of people visiting a repository page who aren't logged in to Github on that browser don't have an authorized private key. It makes complete sense to present only options for anonymous checkouts to anonymous users. Long ago they used to push SSH as the "right" way to pull repositories (I still almost exclusively use SSH), but their change to recommending HTTPS…

i wasn't talking about git:// urls and i think that removing them was probably a good idea, for the reasons you describe, but also because they didn't have any way to stymie mitm attacks

but it seems like my original comment was incorrect in a couple of different important ways, and i appreciate people having pointed that out

Re: Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

#216

Post by hinkley »

ThrowAgain wrote: post #171
jbverschoor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a tombstone of Gates during hackers in progress (hip97) iirc. Shows you how much he and windows was loved. Today’s microsoft is forced to play nice.

Funny how all my "nerdy" friends love Gates now. I guess 100B$+ is enough to afford PR team that can convince public you are no longer "more evil than satan himself".

Honestly I think this all is Melinda's doing. If he hadn't got married to her he'd still be a raging piece of shit.

Re: Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

#217

Post by hinkley »

whizzter wrote: post #188
ThrowAgain wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how all my "nerdy" friends love Gates now. I guess 100B$+ is enough to afford PR team that can convince public you are no longer "more evil than satan himself".

No, we've just realized that they're just less evil than all the other current behemoths. Sun tried to be "cool" but was really just a money loss machine and now Java and MySQL is the property of we-will-audit-you-Oracle and Mr I-will-sue-people-when-I-need-another-yacht-Ellison. G had a motto of "do no evil", that motto is long gone. I've always disliked their handling of the Android platform (the handset manufucatu…

You get what you measure and if you work in a C Corp long enough, especially a big one, you spend a lot of time measuring revenue and "cost centers".

Re: Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

#218

Post by peoplefromibiza »

kragen wrote: post #214
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> embrace, extend, and extinguish is alive and well ??? you can clone Github projects and move them on every other git repository you want if Github removed the support for git, Github would be dead in a week. Not only because git is literally in their name, but because every programmer tool that deals with code (editors, IDEs, etc.) has embedded support for git, the protocol, not git the Github version of the protoc…

if www browsers had removed support for ftp, browsers would have been dead in a week, in 01998 but because they waited until last year, removing that interoperability did not significantly affect their dominance as a way of accessing the internet

> but because they waited until last year

FTP died long ago as a protocol, it wasn't killed by some corporations trying to embrace and extend, but by better protocols (SFTP, SCP, HTTP(S) etc.)

also FTP created a lot of issues behind NAT

Re: Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

#219

Post by hinkley »

icelancer wrote: post #142
Beltalowda wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is whether an omnidominant platform like Microsoft's would have arisen in the first place. While the current Android/Apple situation isn't ideal, it's certainly better than only one of the two. I don't think it's a forgone conclusion that a "Microsoft-esque" monopoly would have happened.

For as bad as Microsoft was/is, imagine if Oracle filled that role.

Mercifully, I don't have to worry about Larry Ellison every day of the week. He's not a 'oh god what has he done now' sort.

The good thing about Larry is as shitty as his bag of tricks is, it doesn't change much. What people hated about Microsoft is that they innovated on fucking other companies over and putting them out of business.

There would not have been 'a different Microsoft'. It was Gates and Ballmer and friends that did that. Paul Allen got sick and then split with Microsoft to do pretty much completely different things for the rest of his life. Not that people have good things to say in Seattle about his behavior as landlord.

Re: Bill Gates: I'm literally losing sleep over Java (1996)

#220

Post by hinkley »

nhatcher wrote: post #77
hinkley wrote: post #12

I still have a JavaOne tshirt in the back of my closet that says, In a World Without Fences, Who Needs Gates?

I remembered it as "In a world without walls, who needs gates and windows"

It went through a lot of iterations after that, but I promise you I haven't been counterfeiting t-shirts.
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