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Judge Reinstates Java Injunction Against Microsoft
Anonymous Coward writes " New York Times story (free registration required) - the lead paragraph: 'SAN JOSE, Calif. (Reuters) - In the latest chapter in the legal battle between two rival software titans, a federal judge on Tuesday reinstated an order forcing Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O) to change software based on the Java programming language created by Sun Microsystems Inc.'" And as long as we're talking about Sun, check this Red Herring Story headlined "IBM wants to kick Sun butt." Whoa, baby! They play rough in the big leagues, don't they?
Don't mind me if I'm in no mood to celebrate. Between eToys, DVD and the MPAA, I've developed a distaste for the legal system as it applies to intellectual property.
TOYWAR!!
Finding God in a Dog
Yahoo: http://dailynews.y ahoo.com/h/nm/20000125/tc/microsoft_sun_2.html ://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/newsbursts/0,7407,24 27342,00.html?chkpt=p1bn
ZDNN: http
It was posted here on Tuesday January 25, @05:21PM EST The no-reg wired.com story here.
This used to be "the good fight", until Sun started sucking worse than ever... now that they've gone and went fascist with Java, and started screwing the Linux community 6 ways to Sunday, this looks like just another bitchfest between two evil empires... at least I don't have to waste brain-cycles figuring out who to root for...
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
What we need are true open and portable languages (Perl or Lisp?) that are standard because the community agreed on them. Maybe I'll try hacking a perl interpreter into Mozilla...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yeah, I know this is probably a troll, but anyway...
Then you obviously haven't been listening very hard. Even on /. there are heaps of stories you could read to catch up.
A lot. You don't see, and you probably won't see any big commercial apps or games in Java. The language just isn't suited to that. But the majority of programming isn't for commercial apps or games, it's building customised applications for businesses. Java has carved itself a pretty huge niche there.
For example, I need to write an app that runs on a Linux server, to act as a central clearing point for transactions to be routed to 'n' proprietary credit-card processing gateways, each running a different protocol, most of them on NT boxen. Gluing everything together with Java has saved me a hell of a lot of time and effort.
The UI framework improved immeasurably with the introduction of Swing, which is a lot more feature-rich than AWT. It's still slow compared to the equivalent C program, but not critically so.
Repeat after me: "Java is not just applets. If your browser's implementation of Java sucks, blame your browser vendor."
Aside from trying to kill it? Not much. IBM is a lot better role model for what to do with Java. Microsoft tried to take the name, and screw with the standard, while IBM are committed to the standard, but don't care if they get to use the name. (IBM press release)
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The more I learn about the Internet, the more amazed I am that it works at all.
Someone please enlightened this poor confused soul. :)
Zontar The Mindless,
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Java is still a standard. The only difference is what 'name' goes on the standardized product, Sun or 'National Java Directorate'. With Sun as the controlling body, there are resources and teeth behind each and every 'thou shalt not'.
However, I don't think thats the real issue. I'd be willing to bet the Microsoft/Java litigation gives Scotty endless pleasure. MS screws with the Java bytecode implementation, Scott sics the lawyers back on them, Steve downs some Pepto. MS screws with the Java includes, the lawyers come back out and Steve switches to vodka. Boy! Oh boy! Microsoft is releasing a new O/S with a new JVM? There's an actual release date? Naw, the lawyers have heard about it. Scotty gets his laughs, the MS release date gets laughed at, and Ballmer becomes an alcoholic.
.sig: Now legally binding!
This is probably offtopic, but it is sort of related. Anyway, it is something that I felt like complaining about.
MS is not the only company that is polluting Java or making it difficult to write code on one platform and deploy it on another... many of the IDE's that I've seen do the same thing. The auto-generated code makes use of classes that "wrap" the base Java stuff, resulting in source code that is only useable by the original IDE. Visual Cafe seems to be one of the worst offenders. A coworker of mine uses VC and she is constantly having problems with the autogenerated code and deployment on Solaris (she does her development on NT). She has had trouble getting applets to run under Solaris or HP-UX, even though they run on NT. The main cause seems to be some proprietary class that Visual Cafe includes. Some of the problems may be a result of her inexperience with Java, but I do not think that is the only reason.
I use Metrowerks CodeWarrior for Java on NT at work and on MacOS at home... it seems to be one of the best development environments around. I have not had any trouble getting applets or aplications developed in CodeWarrior to run on any of our target platforms. Even when using the RAD tools that generate code for you... the generated code seems a lot cleaner than the code generated by other IDE's. I keep the use of the RAD tools to a minimum, though. I have had less experience with IDEs like NetBeans and Simplicity for Java, however, from what I have seen, they generate pretty clean code as well.
I guess my main point is that I think its also important for the source code to be as portable as the resulting classes. Building a project in an IDE that ties you to that particular development environment is as bad as Microsoft's pollution of the basic language itself.
Anyway, sorry for the rambling.
why should sun support java natively on a crappy platform with idiotic trolls running it ?
1. They're Daemons, not Trolls.
2. FreeBSD is better than Linux in many roles. For example, in many server applications FreeBSD is a better choice.
3. FreeBSD is only a figurative stone's throw from NetBSD and OpenBSD. By supporting a native FreeBSD port we are greatly shortening the distance the other two will have to travel.
4. We are brethren of the 'Opened Source'. What benefits FreeBSD inevitably will come back to benefit Linux someday.
.sig: Now legally binding!
to what you said about Microsoft's tools I would add, "and used their monopoly power to bundle their incompatible engine into their OSified browser in a way that would deny many many users access to a true Java implementaton."
I'm sick of hearing some of these ignorant remarks.
"Ohhh, microsoft/m$/micros~1 wants to make their java the standard java".
What a load of crap, Microsoft's _changes_ to java or more specifically, J++, to the programmer just ads some packages that you can choose or not choose to use. True their are some keywords (again additions) to make it easy to access libraries without having to write stub libraries for JNI.
These things are all additions, any java programmer (unless they're 11 year old wannabes) knows what is java and what isn't. It's not as if Microsoft have changed all the keywords, or that they've restructured the language. They've added some features. If you write _JUST_ java and compile it, it will work on other JVMs. If you want to use the java languge to write windows apps (say, as an alternative to VB) you can, but it will only run on windows. If you're stupid enough to think that it will run on Linux too, then well...uh...you shouldn't be programming.
And If you use microsoft's language extensions to make it easier to access, say, dlls/so, then it won't run on other JVMs...with some exceptions (like Transvirtual's clean room java "Kaffe").
Using J++, it's perfectly easy to make 100% pure java apps, but it's also super easy to make windows apps. When you make windows apps, treat Java like a language.
But if MS gives you the browser with your OS and your word processing applications etc. and the browser comes with MS's VM, and the All Powerful Microsoft tells them that it's Java compatible, "why should they download a new VM?" Do you think many Joe-Clueless-Users are going to know that MS's "Java" isn't really Java? No. How do you get MS to be compliant or not do the above? Take them to court.
I've come for the woman, and your head.
I still don't understand how Microsoft's additions constitute 'pollution' of Java. Didn't they stop calling it Java in favor of J++ anyway?
And ignoring MSFT's lip service about 'innovation', don't they have a right to improve their product in any manner in which they see fit?
Sun refused to take Java down the standards route, and this is what they get. They brought it on themselves. This court case is a waste of everyone's time. Maybe Bjarne Stroustrup (sp) should sue them for 'polluting' C++ with Visual C++.
[I'm not pro-Microsoft, I'm pro-rationality]
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auntfloyd
Associated press story: http:// wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?FRONTID=TECHNOLOGY&ST ORYID=APIS7271RSG0
...else its useless.
micros~1 had no right to alter an industry standard. if they want to play in their own sandbox, great - more power to them. if they want to have win(n+1) speak to other boxes of same geneology in ultra-proprietary ways - fine.
however, they don't have the right to alter java and make it un-interoperable. dammit - the whole point of java was interoperability. can't micros~1 understand that simple concept?
they already have 'value add' browser crap (active-X and such) so that when their ilk access micros~1 sites, they can get infected with all the supported virii(tm) that are currently supported.
java is supposed to be the same on every platform. that's the definition (or at least the justification) for yet another language. when you start creating vendor variants just to differentiate, you lose the whole value of such!
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I like the little news at the end of the article about the stock price change. Somebody should make a timeline of microsoft's share price along with the time of important law case issues and see if the people are really concerned about the moral and law issues Microsoft is facing or does everytime the stock goes down due to a case people just buy the shares back up because they are cheaper?
It's turtles all the way down.
IBM and Sun both produce products in the same catagories and would be a good (albeit expensive) choice for a new or old company in terms of computing power. They also share the same problem, bad PR. To find success stories using one of the companies' solutions you need to look several layers down, it would be alot more impressive to people (especially PHBs) if they would really show off their technology and tout its good performance. Both offer a network computing solution which if you used it in your office would solve a host of problems associated with managing a hundred or more PCs but do you see commercials or banners about them? Nope. IBM is sort of sitting on its thumbs lately, partially (in my opinion) due to their reduction in funding for them dropping "pure science" research for "profitable science" research. They are refining established technologies and not looking for new ones. Both companies need to simplify their product line-up and show their potential customers what they can do. Apple (go flame your bottoms and not me) is a very good example of how to work the machine we call consumerism. Make your product line visible and clean, show people what exactly your products can do, and unify your OS strategy. Your big servers need to communicate well with your small clients and your thin clients better communicate damn well with both your servers and other clients thin or otherwise not to mention everyone else's clients and networks.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
MS cannot do this even if they have a clean-room java codebase.
If they want to call it a Java compiler, it *must* compile java code, according to the specification and rules set out by Sun. If it doesn't, they cannot call it Java, period.
The articles don't say it.
The issue is not the VM, but the compiler (Visual J++).
Sun's compiler was producing code that *only* works as the programmer intended onthe MS VM.
To get around their contract with sun (which required that software 'work' on sun's reference VM), MS ensured that if the code produced by J++ was run on a proper Java VM, it would run, but bring up messages explaining that functions were disabled and it would not run correctly.
So, as MS puts it, technically, the code *runs*, and technically, Sun didn't say it had to run the same way as the programmer intended.. (which is sooo damn obvious in the first place.. )
The manuals for J++ don't make it clear that J++ is not Java. (They are cleverly worded). As a result, people will test java programs with J++, expecting them to work on any Java JVM, and inadvertantly they get their codebase locked into using J++.
This doesn't seem to have been the relevant point in the court ruling, but it's the reason *I* think J++ "pollutes" Java.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Here's an interesting though: Why would you even file for an injunction if the person/entity is already in compliance?
:)
I'm not a legal expert, but it seems pointless to waste time on doing this unless MS is either in the wrong (in Sun's opinion) already or MS is planning to bring something to market that does violate an injunction. My interest would be more in the latter...
Unfortunately the article didn't provide much inof about what specifically is being injunctioned or the grounds of the injunction. Taking it at face value it would seem the injunction should at least effect MS's Java development tools, such as Visual J++. What would be really interesting is if Sun persues MS on the grounds of anything they make using Java uses the Java licence. This could include Internet Explorer or even NT Server's IIS Web Server.
Just my thoughts, feel free to correct me as nessesairy
- Sig
It's really easy to not use any of Microsoft's extensions. I use Visual J++ as my IDE and generate code that runs beautifully on Solaris because I stay away from Microsoft's extensions.
Unfortunately, they decided to use a different native method interface, which causes some packages to fail. Also, in their standard distribution, they omitted RMI (like we're all gonna choose DCOM if RMI isn't there). That makes it tougher to write applets and applications that use RMI and run under Microsoft's VM.
It has gotten worse now because Sun no longer sends MS any Java updates, so the MS Java is pretty much stuck at around JDK 1.1.3. JDK 1.2 runs so much faster, I won't use jview at all to run programs, and I'm about to give up on VJ++.
How are they progressing? I haven't heard jack about Java as a few years ago when it was getting so much hype. Where have you been? Java's been doing fantastically (Sun's a different story ;)--1.2 was a terrifically-endowed revision. One of the very biggest things that has been happening with Java is a simple growth of available libraries of objects. Objective-C had/has in excess of a decade of component development, but is going down the tubes (bad decision, Apple!). Java has nowhere near the same richness of libraries--but things are growing, particularly since Apple officially endorsed Java over Obj-C for Rhapsody (OSXS; WO, EO, yellow box) development. How many real world apps are being developed in Java? Simply: a lot. C++'s "object model" is an incredibly flaky, foul, misbegotten notion of OOP in the first place. C++ is the programming world's analog of Windows in the OS world: everyone's involved with it, but it leaves this big dirty stink all over the place and you shudder to think that people use it despite the vastly superior alternatives. Have they sped things up? Their UI framework was a dog from what saw. All I see Java doing for me is making my browser crash, and I am not joking. 1 out of every 5 webpages I access which use Java crashes the browser. Yes, things are getting faster all the time. There are a lot of research projects going on (a great one here at UMichigan, in fact) that are dabbling with a faster way to do security checks (linguistically instead of using byte code, for those interested). And the UI stuff is great--again, you just need to know where to look. Oh, and your browser is crashing because it sucks: I write applets all the time and never crash IE 4.5 on my dev box (Mac G3/450 running OS9 and OSXS). Never ever. (oh, and I have to use IE in order to get some Swing components to work correctly--I don't do it by choice!). da5id@umich.edu
I hesitate to call VB a standard. (Okay, it is a standard pain in my ass) It is produced and marketed by only one company. Java has implementations done by IBM, Blackdown, Sun, Microsoft, Novell, etc. There are a lot more balls of wax dependant on Java.
Yes, if Microsoft licensed the Win32 API to Sun, and Sun screwed around with in such a way that the near monopoly market share of Sun's Windows2008-enabled applications were hurting Microsoft, sure! Sun didn't follow the terms of the licensing agreement, and Microsoft was financially damaged.
.sig: Now legally binding!
This is a repost from today's other Java discussion. Please read and go vote!
While there has been an official Linux port, there is no native Java 2 SDK for FreeBSD. Please, all members of JDC, go here and cast your votes to have Sun release this software. We are up to 2703 votes so far. It took 4551 votes before Sun released the Linux version, so we're almost there, right? ;-)
(However, I am well aware that the release of the Linux port was due in large part to the excellent folks from Blackdown.)
Here are a few of the tons of comments on the "bug report" page where you can vote for this RFE (request for enhancement).
You must be registered in the JDC (Java Developer Connection) to vote. Registration is free and quick, so if you're a Java developer or just have a general interest on FreeBSD or Java, please go sign up and vote!
Anyone interested in doing an unofficial port please mail me at javadrew@spammerslovehotmail.com (obviously remove the "spammerslove" :-).
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I like to watch.
Serverside java man. It works really good, it rules. Yeah, client side sucks, sorta. You *can* build a client side app (not a fucking applet) that runs fairly good once it gets started. I've heard stories of performance increases on the client side now with JDK 1.3. Applets, however, do suck if you don't do them right, but if you do them right, they won't "make your browser crash".
IMHO, users are not concerned with being locked into [some_OS]. In fact, most of them don't care about OS. They just need some basic useful applications to run on their computer - browser, mail/newsreader, photoediting/printing software, office suite, games, etc.
Do you really think Java is appropriate tool to build such applications? I don't.