An executive with Sun Microsystems' JavaSoft division played down the loss of the US vote in Tuesday's meeting of the International Standards Organization, saying he is cautiously optimistic about Java's shot at becoming a global standard.
"We knew the US would be hard," said JavaSoft vice president Jim Mitchell. "We certainly would have loved to have it. We missed it by the slimmest of margins."
Sun won a simple majority among members of the US standards panel, but fell short of the needed two-thirds support.
"The votes so far, they are six to one in favor. All of the other six votes were previously 'no' with comments - now changed to 'yes,'" said Mitchell. "Things are looking reasonably good."
Ironically, the US technical advisory group meeting was held in the lap of Sun's nemesis - at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft released a statement Tuesday that taunted Sun, and called the ISO endorsement bid "a brazen marketing stunt that risks devaluing the entire international standards process."
"I don't know what's brazen about it, and it's definitely not a marketing stunt," Mitchell responded.
"This was really an attempt to make it so the openness of the Java platform and specifications could get into a standards body through an approved process in a way that preserves the investment that Java has made," said Mitchell.
However, Charles Fitzgerald, group product manager at Microsoft, argued that Sun is doing the technology a disservice: "Frankly, we don't care which path they choose - either make it proprietary or play the standards game for real. Sun's is a hybrid, neither fish nor fowl, and denies Java the benefit of either model."
The prevailing opinion is that without a universal standard for Java, the language will splinter off in too many directions, undermining Sun's promise of "write once, run anywhere." Sun says Microsoft is already on that course, and filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit earlier this month challenging Redmond's most recent implementation of the language.
"There's one company around that's been doing its best to fragment the Java market and put its own stuff on it," Mitchell said. "So guess who would be most upset about it becoming a standard that mirrors what it is that the industry depends on, and you can make your own judgment about such things."
Sun's first proposal to the International Standards Organization was met by a negative July vote. Only three countries approved, while 20 others wanted revisions made before going further into the review stage. Most of the comments concerned Sun's stewardship of the Java technology and the rights other companies would have to use the Java name in their products.
Mitchell dismissed the notion that the United States' vote might sway remaining voters.
"Many of [the other countries] have already proceeded because they wanted to make a point that they are not following the US," Mitchell said. "The other countries in the world actually get pretty sensitive about being viewed as just followers of the US. We know a number of other countries that are not yet public that are also a positive vote. But they made it clear they were on their own."
Australia, Denmark, France, Hungary, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have approved Sun's application, and 20 others will vote before the 14 November deadline. Each country's vote carries equal weight in the standards body.
Mitchell also played down any long-term negative impact should Sun lose the bid entirely.
"If the whole thing fails, I don't think it would affect the success of Java. There is a lot of upside to winning, but not a lot of downside to failing. In a number of countries in the world, it still has real value to have an ISO standard that they can put in their procurement policies. More and more of them are allowing de facto standards. so they can buy what is popular in the marketplace.
If Sun succeeds in becoming a publicly available specification submitter - as it has proposed to the standards organization - it would maintain control over the evolution of the technology, making changes as it sees fit. Normally, the the organization will not grant this authority to a company, but Sun has argued that it is in the best position to make necessary changes and is in constant contact with the relevant developer community.
At a news conference last month, Mitchell said "Sun cannot and will not surrender its trademarks for the Java platform to ISO or anyone else." He likened Java to Windows, and said "we'll consider putting the Java trademarks in the public domain when Microsoft relinquishes control over the Windows specification name and trademark."
Ultimately, Java's future as a standard may have less to do with its high-tech merits than Sun's old-fashioned persuasion politics.
"They've been busy lobbying and offering vacation trips to Geneva to some of the European [delegates]," said Microsoft's Fitzgerald. "In the US there's a procedure for voting, but in other countries a government minister can decide what their position is."
