Slashdot Mirror
Java Thrown Back in Windows, For Now
darnellmc writes: "According to this News.com article, Microsoft has decided to include their JVM in the next Windows XP service pack. They are doing this in an attempt to avoid Sun's recent lawsuit against them for anti-trust violations. I wonder if the recent decision allowing the nine states' suit to continue had anything to do with this? Of course it did. MS plans not to have the JVM in future versions of Windows though."
Its a token gesture Java 1.1.3. Now they can say "See theres Java, yup its in Windows!" To bad that java is years old. Stale mb ;)
I have a shitty sig!
I'm sure Mr. Gates is very happy that you are spreading his FUD for him, free of charge.
Sun's FIRST lawsuit was NOT about Microsoft including Java... It was to force Microsoft to include Java without polluting it with windows-specific crap - Microsoft had signed an agreement saying they wouldn't do this then tried to get out of it.
Sun won, and Microsoft said "Fine... we don't want to play with your toys anyway. We're going home". Basically saying to Sun, "You either let us pollute your language, or we don't want anything to do with it".
To which Sun countered with "Look! Microsoft is using their market leverage to coerce us! Exactly what the anti-trust suit was about!".
And Sun was right.
Don't get me wrong... I have no great love for Sun either, but at least they aren't a convicted felon.
Microsoft does not provide a "JVM". They provide the Microsoft Virtual Machine or Microsoft VM. This may or may not be compatible with any given version of valid Java object code: Microsoft doesn't make that claim any more.
Further, Microsoft VM object code compiled with Microsoft J++ is definitely not guaranteed to work with any version of the Sun JVM. Further further, Microsoft VM object code compiled for any given version of the Microsoft VM is not guaranteed to - and sometimes does not - work with newer versions of the Microsoft VM.
Let me give you an example of what this means in practice. My employer uses the web based Rational ClearQuest for bug tracking. It used java-like applets, and works with all versions of Microsoft IE on 9x/NT/2K/XP platforms using the Microsoft VM that we've tried it with, but with no versions of the Sun JVM in IE, or indeed with any browser other than IE.
It gets worse. Our actual product uses java-like applets, built using Microsoft J++. They work with IE 5.5 under Windows 9x/NT/2K using the supplied VM. And nothing else, which exactly fulfills the specification given to the developers. Our tools don't work with any other browser, nor with the Sun JVM, nor (and this is where it gets silly) nor with XP and IE 6 using the latest downloaded Microsoft VM. Yes, our code is "write once, run once" in the worst sense. By tying ourselves to the Microsoft platform, Microsoft browsers and Microsoft VM, we've even managed to build in obsolescence and ensure non-forwards compatibility on our chosen platform.
The scary part for me isn't that the java-like "experts" in my company don't care, but that so many of them don't even understand what I'm talking about. As far as they're concerned, IE running java-like applets using the Microsoft VM on Windows is Java. They don't even seem to know about other platforms or VM's or appletviewers or applications, or that they're creating java-like object code rather than correct Java.
As a hobbyist Java programmer (using the Sun JVM on multiple platforms) this both pisses me off, and makes me very sad indeed. I greatly fear that Microsoft has succeeded in assimilating and killing Java. I worry that Java has already been dealt the fatal blow, but it's still staggering on under its own momentum, shedding limbs and slowly dissolving. When it finally expires, the beast that will erupt from its tattered corpse won't even be J++, but C#
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.