Sun Files Suit Against Microsoft for Anti-Trust Violations

Herve writes "Sun Microsystems announced it has filed a private antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corporation. The suit, filed March 8, 2002 in the United States District Court in San Jose, CA., seeks remedies for the harm inflicted by Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior with respect to the Java[tm] platform and for damages resulting from Microsoft's illegal efforts to maintain and expand its monopoly power. In June 2001, the Federal Court of Appeals found Microsoft guilty of illegally abusing its monopoly power with respect to Sun and the Java platform. Sun's suit seeks to redress the competitive and economic harm caused by Microsoft's illegal acts."

Comments

The first of many......

[CDWert]

Well, I am suprised to see Borland or Corel didnt lead this suit front.

Now that MS has been found GUILTY of anticompetitive practices the floodgate will probably open.

"Who have we harmed today ?"

To be honest any Joe,Dick or Harry, could sue them for harm if in some way they could show (by the finding of guilt) they have been directly harmed.

The really funny part is, well Ill be blunt, JAVA sucks IMHO, and in alot other peoples opinion too, To sue because MS has broken Java compatibility is like suing the vaccine companies for erradicating smallpox ......

Great ... ten different versions of Windows

[pgrote]

This is what the future holds if the states lawsuit or Sun's are successful.

I remember when there were three different DOS versions (DR.DOS, IBM and Microsoft). There were slight differences in all three that caused issues.

Look at the Unix space back then and it was the same thing.

I don't want ten different versions of Windows.

Re:...and more

[MisterBlister]

The point is..when did bundling things with the OS become a crime? Microsoft should be free to bundle whatever they want with their OS, if they believe it adds value for the customer (and a browser certainly does). Why should their ability to do this be cut off just because they have been very successful at selling their OS?

Sure, this bundling may have a negative impact on certain companies or potential companies, but hey that's life in a capitalist society, take it or leave it.

Nobody is likely to make any real money selling web servers for Linux, since most distros bundle Apache...Should web server makers sue based on that? Get a grip!

Re:Sun Whines

[RogueAngel7]

Sun makes hardware and software, or more specificly software standards and api's. and MS also makes hardware in the form of game devices, and formerly in a joint intel-Msft agreement, stuff like motherboards, firmware, Nic cards and so on.

Kinda blurs the line huh?

Personally i dont trust either one, let them both burn!

RA7
-

Re:2 points people seem to have missed

[KidSock]

2) Did anyone consider that maybe the MS Java VM being faster than the Sun Java VM had something to do with MS not makeing their full APIs available for other companies to use? Just a thought.

No. In the early days of VMs, MS's was indeed faster but a Java VM is an interpreter/compiler written in C so this has nothing to do with "APIs".

What they did do wrong is they deliberately left out things like Java Native Interface (JNI) and Remote Method Invocation (RMI) which are elemental to the Java language. When Sun cried "foul!" (and rightly so) MS just stonewalled the platform.

If MS had played nice and genuinely supported the Java platform Java would be a much bigger success than it is today. Just imagine how awesome it would be if there was a native Win32 GUI API. Of course it never happend so we're forced to putz along with the Swing library.