Sun's McNealy codes community into creation

By siliconindia   |   Friday, 18 May 2007, 19:30 IST
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Bangalore: Sun Microsystems founder Scott McNealy discussed the importance of breaking down barriers and creating communities in order to drive innovation in the Participation Age. While delivering the keynote address titled 'Open Possibilities' at the Sun Technology Summit and the simultaneous rollout of Sun Technovate '07 - a technology and innovation focused forum dedicated to Indian CXOs - in Mumbai, McNealy also discussed the key themes essential to the Participation Age: security, community and openness. The keynote was also beamed live to a gathering of more than 500 developers at the Sun Technology Summit in Bangalore. The inaugural day of the summit also featured a keynote address by Mr. N. Srinath, Managing Director of VSNL & CEO of VSNL Group of companies, Prof Sadagopan, Director, IIIT Bangalore, keynote presentations from Sun?s customers including Punjab National Bank Tata Teleservices and L&T. "Technology has the shelf life of a banana," said McNealy, while talking about the importance of creating communities. ?Hence it is important to share technological know-how and create communities, and the only effective way to do it is through open sourcing. "By making the barrier to entry zero, you encourage more and more developers to join the community and fuel innovation through collaboration," he said further talking about the importance of creating communities. "The beauty of our open source strategy is that it lets Sun do business in areas of the world that are growing at significant rates: India fits squarely into this category," he added. "This helps the 3.5 million developers in India drive and manage innovation, and in turn help us move as fast as the market here will allow us." Stating how opensourcing Java has helped create a large community, McNealy stated that over 3.5 million Indian developers are now using Java technology on more types of mobile devices, smart cards, ATMs, thin clients, PCs, servers and mainframes than any other software. "This is because all you need to do to get Java is go to the website, click download, and wait." "And did I mention it's all free?" he reiterated at regular intervals through the talk. He also cited a recent study undertaken by two professors of IIM Ahmedabad which makes an attempt to assess and quantify the economic impact of Java in India. The study concludes that Java contributes to 2.1 percent of the Indian GDP.