Thank You Kim Polese

One of the questions I always ask during a job interview to a prospective Java Programming candidate is: Do you know who Kim Polese is?

I've asked this question a number of times, and have never been given the correct answer. (I have the reputation amongst my peers for being a very difficult interviewer).

Kim Polese was the brilliant Product Manager of the Java Product at the time of it's first release 1994-1995-ish. It was she who had the innovative marketing decision to make it "free" to download and use. The result: Massive acceptance and use almost immediately. Within 4 years, Java was by far the most widely used programming language for most applications.

There is also a lingering side-effect to her decision that most people who use use the internet are not aware of: Her decision to make it "free" to use, spawned a huge Java-application-based open-source community with people inspired to donate their work such that others can use it for free based using whatever open-source license they choose, and, in some ways, one could argue that "free" application use over the internet was also influenced by this decision.

The latter was also heavily influenced by market conditions and the dot-com boom pricing structure. But, every time you use the internet, most likely you use a free product or free service indirectly influenced by the brilliant marketing decision that Kim made and the spirit of contribution and sharing of innovation, software, and services that resulted because of it.

You can learn more about this brilliant person here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Polese