Q&A Part 2: Java creator Gosling on JavaOne show, proprietary technology

He also explained what Java means to him

By Carol Sliwa

June 13, 2003 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Sun Microsystems Inc. Vice President James Gosling this week spoke with Computerworld about the company's latest activities around the Java programming language that he created and a proprietary tool kit for the creation of graphical user interfaces that IBM has introduced. In Part 1 of this interview, he also talked about the prospect of an open-source move for Java (see story).
Excerpts from the rest of the interview follow:
What do you think about Sun employing Christina Aguilera to promote Java in cell phones? I don't [know] how that happened. I didn't have anything to do with that. I'm from the wrong generation. If they had gotten Christine Lavin, I would have gotten excited. Mary Chapin Carpenter would have worked really well for me.
Sun culturally has tended to be a back-room kind of company, because most of the people we sell to are sort of back-room kind of people. But our stuff has been moving outwards, and there's lots of interesting tension inside the company about that. It's been this sort of inexorable force for the last few years. And there are a lot of really interesting things happening out there, and it's pretty inescapable.


James Gosling of Sun Microsystems Inc.

Do you think it will have any effect on Java? That particular thing was all about cell phones and the embedded stuff. The cell phone/PDA/you-name-it market has just been going astonishingly wild.
How do you feel about the Java brand campaign that Sun just announced? I think that's pretty cool. We commissioned an outside company to do a brand awareness study, and they came back with numbers that we thought were pretty amazing. At the same time, we had all these phone companies that were building this stuff, and there was a fair amount of interest in having a logo to put on the cell phones, like Dolby. The original logo that we had was too detailed.
What does the Java brand signify? Why should anyone care? I think the sort of gut reaction should be this is a more alive device. This is a more dynamic device. At a precise level, it probably means this cell phone will run MIDP 2.0 applications. But to most people what that means is, "I want to play backgammon with my friend; I can run backgammon on the cell phone."
Do you think the new Java brand and logo campaign that Sun just announced will have any meaning for corporate IT? That particular branding campaign is all about mobile devices, and there

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