What Happened to Jini? 12
JJ asks: "What has happened to Jini, Sun's networked mobile code technology that debuted with Mmuch fanfare nearly two years ago? The answer seems to be not much. What's the reason for the lack of adoption of Jini? Is it because nobody can understand the trademark and licensing requirements? Or is it because few people have realized Jini's true potential?"
JINI is way before its time... (Score:1)
Re:Not dead, but dying (Score:1)
Re:Not dead, but dying (Score:1)
Re:It hasn't gotten adopted (Score:1)
http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/technic
...and while it actually does have all the classes for the demo, if you look closely you'll find the PalmProxy refers out to a half-dozen net.jini packages (not supplied), and rmi packages (ditto). The KVM is pretty limited (no JNI, serialization, lacks coverage of the Palm API) and I'm not convinced the standard Jini/RMI packages would work here.
I did find a palm jini/rmi implementation though, after a little searching:
http://postpc.cs.berkeley.edu/rmilite/
Re:JINI is way before its time... (Score:1)
But this is exactly the reason why Jini was developed. Some people don't like Microsoft "making things easy" for everyone. :-)
Jini is amazing. (Score:1)
cheers
dave
Re:JINI is way before its time... (Score:1)
All Hail Bill. The pointy haired one has spoken.
M$ bashing can only go so far (but its fun).
jini over bluetooth (Score:2)
Wireless AND ubiquitous access to the net, THEN they'll have something functional. What they'll do with it after that, I frankly have no idea. A "contents of my fridge" web page would be nice, but why? Now, remote control of my stereo from anywhere in the house....
wouldn't a Beowolf cluster of these be cool?
Where's the market? (Score:2)
I think the value of JINI is not that it enables devices to be connected together
I see value not in being able to connect devices together, but in putting web servers inside everyday products. Once your house is networked, you plug the device into the cat-5 outlet and hit an IP address -- the device itself provides the web server and interface.
Licensing the operative factor (Score:2)
When I read the licensing agreement, it appeared that one would have to negotiate an agreement with sun even to distribute a jini service for free. When I saw that, I just went ahead, put the jini and javaspaces books away, and moved onto the next topic on the crowded tech topics queue.
The answers so far say it all.... (Score:3)
The sad reality is Jini is actually an excellent technology for enterprise solutions (particularly web solutions). Imagine the benefits of having enterprise services which can be discovered and used automatically. This means that when a system gets loaded, you just deploy a new Jini-tized component, and the without any configuration changes, the software starts spreading the load over to that component.
Unfortunately, Sun didn't tout this aspect of Jini. Indeed, 90% of the people who know what Jini is think it's a technology for connecting network devices. That's a very limited and unproven market. I suspect Sun didn't want to let J2EE's image become confused by allowing Jini to move in to that space.
That in and of itself wouldn't have been a fatal blow, but on top of this was the licensing problem. Jini's license made it hard to deploy Jini solutions without paying Sun some money. Particularly given that the technology was far from perfect and still needs a several evolutions before it'd work right, 3rd parties weren't too interested in overcoming these problems just to see their solutions become Sun property which could be licensed to their competitors.
Finally, Sun's ability to corral vendors together was starting to wane just as Jini was introduced. Sun had been the standard bearer for the anti-Microsoft camp with their Java technology, but by the time Jini was being promoted Sun was already starting to get a negative image from how they were handling Java. It's hard for a single company to maintain the position that Sun had for the preceeding 3 or 4 years.
So, in summary, Jini was the right technology introduced by the wrong vendor, at the wrong time, in the wrong way, and targeted at the wrong market.
It hasn't gotten adopted (Score:3)
How to break that cycle? Well, there are a few ways:
With Bluetooth and wireless-LANS finally becoming a reality all of Jini's features become that much more attractive and pressing. Even the US DOD drools over this kind of ability (set up a battlefield HQ in a few minutes) though their process is so glacial and baroque that nothing is likely to result from their support that would apply to the rest of us.
The really suprising thing is that Sun doesn't seem to be evangelizing Jini at all. It's possible they can't figure out how to apply this kewl technology gifted to them (they paid for it but it seems to have pretty much come out of the blue to most folks at Sun.) I've not even noticed any technology demos of it. Is anyone aware of anything outside of a lab?