How does Sun make money from Java?

If i look at .net I can understand that MS makes money by selling VS, SQL Server, etc and keeping their windows monopoly intact.

But Sun Microsystems I really dont understand. How do they make money off java. I mean, the vm is free, the java ide(netbeans) is free. They recently made their web dev ide 'java studio creator' free too. So pretty much everything is free. Sure you can say they own the java platform but so what, how do they make any revenue out of it?

Also for that matter how does IBM make any revenue by supporting the devlelopment of eclipse?
Prashant


Sunday, January 15, 2006

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Jave may be free for you, but it ain't free for companies re-distributing it for profit. IBM for instance has to pay lincensing fees to Sun for the right to bundle it in their products. That is also the reason that Sun's JDK cannot be bundled with most linux distributions seeking to be free (as in speech).

That's a good segue for the IBM case. They use java for their Rational product lines. Rational Software Architect is built directly on top of Eclipse as plug-ins. The open-source Eclipse project has maybe 100 plugins. IBM takes all that, and add their 100+ plugins on top, and you end-up with Rational.
Randomista
Sunday, January 15, 2006

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While you make a good point for IBM, I am pretty sure just the revenue out of companies wanting to distribute java doesnt pay the bills of hundreds of developers working on various java technologies in Sun Microystems.
Prashant


Sunday, January 15, 2006

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<unsupported_opinion>
The early business model was to make Java free on the client end, and charge a lot on the server end. Thin computers: they'd have no HD, some RAM and a network interface, all the software would come from the server. Oracle was part of that scheme. Occasionally, you'll see one on e-bay, some are the size of a hardback book.

This mutated into trying to screw Microsoft, as MS was busy trying to destroy Oracle and Sun. Commoditizing the operating system, so that stuff could be written once, run anywhere. Gee, I think there is an advertising slogan that can come out of that. Those apps would be operating system independant, which lead MS to screw around with the JVM (so that java apps would have to be rewritten to run in IE) that they were distributing to the point that Sun sued them. The official excuse from MS why Visual Studio 6 can't be downloaded anymore from MSDN, is because of the settlement of that lawsuit.

The current business model appears to be trying to discover a way to make money.
</unsupported_opinion>

To answer your question, they don't.
Peter
Sunday, January 15, 2006

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'sun' and 'making money' do not belong in the same sentence.
starving coder
Sunday, January 15, 2006

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A little info here.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/01/06/73654_HNsunrevenue_1.html
MBJ


Sunday, January 15, 2006

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Sun makes money from nearly every embedded device that includes a JVM, (even when it's not its own). Think millions of cellphones, set-top-boxes and other cool gizmos.

They'll also touch a royalty on every blue-ray player which will include a mandatory JVM. This *includes* any PlayStation 3 as well.
2cents
Sunday, January 15, 2006

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sun only makes money if you bundle sun JVM and not the others, right ?
what about java libraries ? if you bundle them do u need to pay Sun for that too ??
Rahul


Monday, January 16, 2006

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Nope, you can have a custom JVM, but standards like J2ME forces you to include Sun's .class libraries, which means royalties.

Clever, isn't it ;-)
2cents
Monday, January 16, 2006

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"Nope, you can have a custom JVM, but standards like J2ME forces you to include Sun's .class libraries, which means royalties."

That isn't true at all. You must pass Sun's TCK to be called Java, but how you do that is up to you. Most people take Sun's KVM an customise it, but not everyone.

... and of course, the TCK itself costs money. A lot of money.
Graham Thorpe
Monday, January 16, 2006

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I think Sun makes money from selling hardware and infrastructure software far more than from Java (at least to date).
Abstract Typist
Monday, January 16, 2006

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IBM make a lot of their money from old patents and licencing and also from consulting.
Alan O'Rourke


Monday, January 16, 2006

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Sun doesn't make money directly from Java but it must surely *save* a chunk out of the marketing budget by having it out there in the wild being discussed ad nauseum by anti-MS developers (Sun's target demographic).
Paul Sharples


Monday, January 16, 2006

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so ,if i am a microISV with a product written entirely in java (could be a software service or a packaged software) using open source components, I would still pay Sun royalties ?
RV


Monday, January 16, 2006

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No.
Turtle Rustler
Monday, January 16, 2006

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> How does Sun make money from Java?

By suing MS over the JVM. Didn't they make a $billion off that, or am I thinking of one of the many other lawsuits against Microsoft?
Nick Hebb


Monday, January 16, 2006

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Sun dont make money from Java. They make brandname.
SuperCali
Monday, January 16, 2006

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Nick, microsoft DELIBERATELY CHOSE to pay the money rather than make the distributed JVM compliant with the license from Sun. That was cheaper (to billg/microsoft's ego) than to let the public have any possibility of escape from windows.
Peter
Monday, January 16, 2006

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Sun sells server software just like Microsoft does, but they make money off of their hardware too, and usually that's gonna be Solaris running Java or C++ or Fortran or whatever.

I've never heard of anyone loading Windows Server OS onto a Sun SPARC server.
LinuxOrBust
Tuesday, January 17, 2006

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Sun lose money from Java, they make money selling sandwiches at conferences and flogging Scott McNealy's classic book "How to succeed in business for Dummies, Computer Industry Edition - With Forward by CEO of DEC"
Sun Shareholder


Friday, January 20, 2006