Sun suffers Java standard setback

Sun Microsystems has suffered a serious setback after an international standards body voted to create a committee to develop its own Java standards and ignore the company's recommendations.

The ECMA standards body convened in Japan to decide whether to shift responsibility to a technical committee called TC41 and drop Sun's guidelines.

IBM and Intel were among the 23 member companies that voted in favour of the proposal while Hewlett-Packard and NEC abstained. However, Dell did not exercise its right to vote and Compaq voted against the measure.

In a written letter to ECMA members, the company cited its concerns over Sun's continued influence over the programming language as the reason for its decision.

The move leaves the way clear for Microsoft to submit plans outlining its perceived future for Java.

But Martin Brampton, analyst at Bloor Research, claims avid pure Java supporters need not worry. "Microsoft is very confused in this area and doesn't know what to do. Java is very strong in the server-side environment and Windows NT has a reasonable grip but does not dominate the server market, and there is little prospect of that improving, so it needs to benefit from some sort of cross platform strategy. But it hasn't woken up to that yet," he said.

Sun had proposed the TC41 handle only the "passive maintenance" of the standard and leave the evolution to the Sun-controlled Java Community Process thereby hanging onto its stake in the technology.

Brampton said: "Sun has been under pressure to move towards using a recognised standard body but they are frightened of what others want to do with Java. They want to preserve the whole story as it still has mileage. So you won't see them relinquishing the trademark for example."

But Brampton was unsure whether the standardisation effort would work.

"We'll have to wait and see if it turns out to be a committee with good ideas, companies fighting for their own corner but willing to compromise. Or, if it will be a case of lots of in-fighting for political reasons which will slow the whole process down and people will get frustrated," he said.