How does Sun Microsystems make money out of Java?

All the components required to make a Java application are provided free of cost by Sun. Then, how does it make money out of it. I am developing a Swing Java SE application, and I find that the Java Development Kit (JDK), Netbeans IDE and the Java DB aka Derby database are provided free of charge. So, I am not paying a penny to Sun, yet I am able to make a professional Java application.

Does it earn money through training or certification?
Renadex

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wastedtime

Well up until about a few years ago they made money off their servers and support for them and other products. Now Oracle owns them..so to answer your question, they don't really make any money off of there certs.

eMeS

balmersmith wrote: »

All the components required to make a Java application are provided free of cost by Sun. Then, how does it make money out of it. I am developing a Swing Java SE application, and I find that the Java Development Kit (JDK), Netbeans IDE and the Java DB aka Derby database are provided free of charge. So, I am not paying a penny to Sun, yet I am able to make a professional Java application.

Does it earn money through training or certification?

Maybe this is part of why they're out of business?

Seriously though, Sun held a ton of patents, and sold quite a bit of really sweet hardware and software.

MS

wastedtime

Feel a bit like I badmouthed Sun at it's own funeral...

I did like there Sun Fire Servers. Plus I have to give good rep to a company that was willing to give so much stuff for free and without an account registration. Unlike for example, Panasonic where you have to register your actual product before you can receive update drivers.

UnixGuy

support I guess...

Chris:/*

The free capabilities of Java are limited in Enterprise applications if they could infringe on Oracle's market place.

Java software was not intended to be a money maker primarily for Sun as it was a gateway to open up its market share and improve its software sales and market footprint. Java was initially intended for graphical web applications, interactive TV and mobile devices but as the library was developed its niche expanded.

Sun created a great development tool but their servers and OS really stopped moving forward in a direction that the public wanted them to.

Mojo_666

A mate of mine told me a story about SUN a few weeks back, he had come into some brand new certified sun ram, now apparently the equivalent ram would cost you about £40 but the sun certified version approx £400, so my mate decided to ebay some off, the problem is no one would buy it because it was not traceable throught the correct SUN channels, so second hand (even as brand new the £400 RAM was worthless) I cannot be sure of the details exactly or how accurate it is but it seems to me that they may have just been taking the piss and offering very little in return?

So long SUN, I cannot say I will miss you one little bit.

UnixGuy

Mojo_666 wrote: »

but it seems to me that they may have just been taking the piss and offering very little in return?

...

not really, if anything; SUN hardware is known for its reliability & stability. The RAM certified by SUN means it's tested and there's a guarantee that it will work reliably + it comes with warranty. Yes SUN/Oracle hardware is expensive, but it is very reliable.

Chris:/*

The ram that is certified by Sun or used to be was stress tested an guaranteed not to have any imperfections or prematurely fail. Many large powerful computers that ran distributed mission critical applications could not fail and required such guarantees. Today there are still some needs for hardware applications of that nature but many of those process have been offloaded to other distributed means where software takes the brunt of the abuse now.