American History 1988
Chapter 318 - 308: When the Storm Meets

Chapter 318: Chapter 308: When the Storm Meets

"Mark:

You might not know who I am yet, I’m the founder of SGI and a cooking seat on the board.

As you might already know, as recent news reports have indicated, I am about to leave SGI.

I’ve found my new direction, and you may have guessed it already.

Yes, it’s Explorer, now known as Netscape.

If you’re interested in joining, I welcome a detailed discussion with you."

After Clark sent out this email, he hurried to search for the candidates he had in mind.

He roughly knew where to look—the talent he wanted was right there in Silicon Valley.

Incidentally, Clark was about to resign from SGI, having had enough of the very Silicon Valley star company that brought him both glory and shame.

He had little presence left at SGI, where any board member’s stock options outnumbered his.

Although nominally a cooking seat on the board, only Clark himself knew that he was actually nothing.

Now he was ready to throw himself wholeheartedly into Netscape, having even submitted his resignation letter to SGI.

As yet another founder driven away by his own creation, Clark recently had the fortune to appear in the Los Angeles Times.

While Clark played headhunter in Silicon Valley, on the other side of the network, Anderson took a full 10 minutes to write his reply.

He knew of Clark’s reputation; during his freshman year, he’d had many happy times on SGI machines.

Anderson didn’t hesitate to give an affirmative response in his email.

He had graduated from the University of Illinois and had "willingly" resigned from NCSA.

When he rejected Smar’s terms, this outcome became inevitable.

Anderson greatly disliked the bureaucratic style of the University of Illinois; they wanted to use a tenure position to exchange for Anderson’s commitment to leave the Mosaic project.

Clearly, NCSA wanted Mosaic more than its young genius researcher.

Smar and his colleagues naturally believed that talent was always emerging, created by the University of Illinois.

Mosaic would continue to develop normally, even without Anderson.

However, because of the development team’s early leak, NCSA had recently fallen into public condemnation.

Smar was very angry and almost immediately dismissed Anderson upon hearing the news.

Anderson’s actions had put NCSA in a passive position, and at the same time, Smar realized he was not adept at handling these business matters.

Eventually, after some discussion, the University of Illinois decided to adopt a different model for commercializing Mosaic.

That was to license it to third-party software companies to operate Mosaic.

This way, NCSA could extricate itself from the swirling public opinion; it wasn’t their business anymore.

All the operational decisions were made by the third-party software companies.

Even if someone wanted to criticize Mosaic, it would be directed at the licensing company.

The University of Illinois had simply exchanged their research results for a bit of research funding; what’s wrong with that?

Look, they got tangible benefits without having to bear the risk of public opinion; the issue was perfectly resolved.

NCSA had even chosen their target already—it was Spyglass.

Spyglass had successfully commercialized other NCSA inventions many times before and were familiar with each other.

Once NCSA made up their minds, they no longer showed enthusiasm towards Anderson.

Now, Anderson, disheveled and distracted, had been idle for a week.

He had planned to try his luck in California, where Silicon Valley needed programmers like him.

Especially the Explorer browser, which was always ahead of Mosaic, was born in California.

As a former competitor, Anderson wanted to see the people behind that company.

But things turned out to be dramatically coincidental; before he could pack his bags, an invitation from the other party had already arrived first.

This was exactly what Anderson wanted, so he pondered his tone and took ten minutes to write this reply.

Then, without waiting for a response, Anderson had already packed his bags, ready to depart for California immediately.

...

While Anderson was en route to California, Jim Clark had found his first candidate.

James Gosling had worked at IBM Research before, but now he had joined Sun Microsystems.

The Sun NeWs window system on Sun Microsystems workstations was his creation.

James and Clark were similar in age; they met when their respective companies, SGI and Sun Microsystems, were just starting out.

Back then, Silicon Valley didn’t have as many companies as it does now, and there were even fewer famous ones.

At tech trade meetings or even at the Carriage Wheel Bar, it was easy for them to run into each other.

Clark was well aware of James’s programming talent, which was always related to system architecture.

Therefore, when Dean described the web server, Clark immediately thought of him.

At this moment, Clark was enthusiastically depicting to James the grand future of the Internet.

And how cool it would be to personally create a network language system.

To persuade these IT giants, it wasn’t enough to just talk about stock options; sometimes it was more effective to talk about ideals.

However, as James Gosling listened, his expression grew increasingly odd, until at a certain point midway, he had to interrupt the other person.

"Jim, are you talking about this?" James said, turning his computer screen around.

"Oh~" Clark scrutinized it carefully, only to find it was not any language he was familiar with.

"Forgive my ignorance, it looks like some sort of interactive program."

"Oak," James nodded, "it can run seamlessly on a variety of small devices.

Like set-top boxes, telephones, alarm clocks, toasters, the control and communication of these household appliances."

While listening to James’s explanation, Clark scrolled through the computer screen with his mouse.

He marveled at the new language’s intuitive, distributed, high-performance, multithreaded, and dynamic characteristics.

But there was one problem, and Clark’s brow furrowed slightly.

"James, this is a work of genius, but it’s complicated.

Web servers don’t need such a complex language, the simpler the better.

Because they only need to serve web pages, not televisions, toasters, and the like."

There is a great philosophical difference between the development for professional servers and consumer electronics.

Consumer electronics demand high reliability, low cost, standardization, and ease of use.

While server users require powerful computing abilities and do not care about the price or the universality of their systems.

"I get what you mean, actually just a few changes to Oak, and it can achieve the functions you want."

James was certain he could do this, and even felt that developing software specifically for web servers would be simpler for him.

"Good!" Clark’s eyes lit up, "So it’s not complicated, is it?"

"Although that’s true, I need to remind you that Oak’s market is not optimistic.

Scott and Bill are preparing to shut down the development team; we’ve been working on this project since ’91, but so far have achieved almost nothing."

The "Oak" James spoke of was a brand-new language, designed to coordinate different types of electronic products.

If described in future terms, it’s the intelligent linkage of devices, the Internet of Things.

It’s a novel platform that transcends different hardware and operating systems, allowing various appliances to achieve human-machine communication.

Clearly, it was ahead of its time, as the current network infrastructure simply could not support such collaborative interaction.

Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the Oak language possessed a completely new architecture.

Some of its components could enable the hyper-text language to perform more functions.

For example, interactive maps, 2D/3D animations, scrolling videos, and so on, although nobody realized this at the time.

Indeed, "Oak" is the name of a type of oak tree, ubiquitous in California here.

There are such trees outside James’s office window; he came up with the name by seeing them.

However, since a company was using a similar moniker, James was considering renaming it recently.

Perhaps "Java," the English name for the island of Java—his colleagues like the coffee from there.

Clark failed to notice James’s attention had drifted to the window outside; he was more concerned about web servers.

"James, are you saying Oak is not a success and Sun is getting ready to disband the development group?" Clark’s gaze began to flicker uncertainly.

"That’s right, our first expected platform was the Warner set-top box, but we lost the bid to SGI."

"Uh," Clark felt a little awkward, "Anything else?"

James spread his hands, "Nothing~. FirstPerson is about to be entirely merged into one of Sun’s departments."

FirstPerson was a wholly-owned subsidiary established by Sun with the initial goal of operating the new Oak language platform.

But after several years without any success, Sun Microsystems’ CEO McNealy no longer had expectations for its profitability.

If FirstPerson were to be dissolved, it would mean James losing his leadership of the development group.

This was the result of his many years of hard work; he was reluctant to let it go.

"Here’s the thing, James," Clark felt this was an opportunity sent from heaven, "why don’t we partner up?

I will find helpers for FirstPerson, but only if you assist us in developing the web server.

Also, I need a few good people like you, and I think you’d be willing to introduce them to me."

James Gosling gave Clark a strange look, "Jim, what FirstPerson is currently doing is essentially a money-burner.

We don’t even know where future profits will come from. Or did you recently strike it rich?"

They were friends, and James felt obligated to give him a heads-up.

Clark waved his hand nonchalantly, "Don’t worry, I haven’t struck it rich, but I know someone who has.

He’ll be interested, I guarantee. Oh, and the web server, it’s his project.

If you can handle it, I assure you FirstPerson will survive."

"Who?" James Gosling asked curiously.

"Buddy, you need to start reading Forbes, not just stare at your computer screen.

The one I’m looking for is the richest man right here in Silicon Valley."

Clark believed Dean would be interested in such a project.

Moreover, when the time came to solve problems with financial power, it was Dean’s moment to step in.

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