[clug] Why isn't Java popular on the Linux Desktop? [SEC=PERSONAL]

[Francis Markham]

On 2009/7/15 Francis James Whittle <fudje at grapevine.net.au> spake:
>
> But you might notice that very little of OpenOffice.org is written in
> Java (it basically comes down to macros ), and hey, the company that
> started and controlled THAT cross-platform desktop application even
> changed their stock market doohickey to JAVA.  Maybe the pre-allocation
> model just isn't for desktop applications?  I tried searching for
> information on why OpenOffice.org isn't written in Java and all I found
> was some amateur programmers trying to say that it's because Java is
> slow, which was true ten years ago.  Azureus works well enough...
> (although those SWT tabs are pure ick)

Actually, OpenOffice.org isn't a good datapoint for this.
OpenOffice.Org is based on the StarOffice code-base.  The integrated
StarOffice suite, written in C++, was created in 1994 when Java was
still called Oak and not publicly available.  Sun purchased StarOffice
in 1999, apparently because it was cheaper for them to purchase the
rights to StarOffice and its developers than it was to license MS
Office for internal use at Sun.  In any case, much of the C++ code
base was open sourced and became OO.org, and has seemingly remained a
relatively low priority for Sun ever since.  Re-writing the whole
office suite in Java would be a monumental waste of already scarce
resources.

HTH, HAND

Francis Markham