Sun To Continue To Go After Microsoft

Raiford writes "Sun Microsystem's has vowed to continue their pursuit of seeking damages from Microsoft in spite of the current ruling. A Reuters feature describes yesterday's ruling a setback for Sun and upholding light punishment on Microsoft. The current decision has not deterred Sun from pursuing a billion dollar suit maintaining a position of claiming significant harm from what they feel is clear monopoly"

Comments

Technodarwinism

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the strongest survive. Unfortunately, Sun isn't the strongest.

If you can't win, litigate.

Re:Technodarwinism

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't win, litigate

And if you can't innovate, be Microsoft.

Re:Technodarwinism

[Anonymous Coward]

or any of the other computer/computer software companies out there... or Open Source =)

Re:Technodarwinism

[Anonymous Coward]

> Only the strongest survive.

dipshit. think you're ancestors are the big strong cave men? Bzzzt. you did not come from the idiots who took on wooly mammoths, but the guys hung out in the caves and picked the bones......

Re:Technodarwinism

[thetman]

dipshit. "strongest" isn't meant literally. Do you think he meant the Microsoft corporation can benchpress more than sun corporation?

Fly going after the elephant

[Raul654]

Ok, Sun sues Microsoft in a long and costly trial, and and wins $1 billion end (maybe). Microsoft still has $30 Billion in the bank.

Re:Fly going after the elephant

[djtrialprice]

Yeah, you're probably right. Everyone needs to start suing M$ (if they're not already) for them to really feel it. Maybe we need some kind of "Sue M$" pyramid scheme..?

Re:Fly going after the elephant

[frank249]

A billion to Sun, a few billion to the EU, a billion to AOL plus all the individual civil suits. The findings of facts make these lawsuits a slam dunk. After a while all these could add up to some real money.

Re:Fly going after the elephant

[JordanH]

Not really. They actually have closer to $40 Billion in the bank now and they're accumulating at the rate of about $1 Billion a month.

So, $1 Billion to Sun, $3 Billion to the EU, $1 Billion to AOL, and let's be really generous and say $7 Billion covers all the rest and their lawyers.

If the lawsuits take more than a year, and they will, they'll still have more than they started with.

Re:Fly going after the elephant

[Dan Ost]

And when Bill's stock dips because of all the
negative publicity, that cash pile will have to
be used to prop up the stock price or else
Bill will have to actually start paying his
employees rather than just offer them stock
options.

This could get interesting.

Has anyone written up the implication for
MicroSoft if their stock loses value? Would
be an interesting read.

Re:Fly going after the elephant

[s390]

Has anyone written up the implication for MicroSoft if their stock loses value? Would be an interesting read.

Microsoft's capitalization is such a big part of the stock market that economic anxiety probably had a lot to do with this plutocrats-whores Administration deciding to back off on the Antitrust case.

See the following analysis of Microsoft's financial pyramid for enlightenment:

Microsoft Fraud Facts

Re:Fly going after the elephant

[JordanH]

• And when Bill's stock dips because of all the negative publicity, that cash pile will have to be used to prop up the stock price or else Bill will have to actually start paying his employees rather than just offer them stock options.

  This could get interesting.

  Has anyone written up the implication for MicroSoft if their stock loses value? Would be an interesting read.

Follow the stock market much?

MSFT is down more than 50% since it's high in late 1999. That's never caused them to seriously dip into their cash reserves.

In any case, any bad publicity they might receive from various civil actions will be more than counter-balanced by the fact that the DOJ case is over now.

Re:Fly going after the elephant

[tc]

Enron of software? On what grounds? The article you linked to is pure bunk, and it's pretty easy to see why.

While it's true that if stock options were accounted for as expenditure, Microsoft would have posted a paper loss in some previous years, it's also true that when the stock fell, the same computation would have left them posting a phenomincal profit for precisely the same reason. These fluctuations are exactly why accounting stock options as expenses year-on-year doesn't make sense, and why it is not generally accepted accounting practice.

The undeniable fact is that somehow Microsoft has accumulated over $40 billion in liquid asset reserves. How did that happen if they took a loss every year? The contrast with Enron could not be more stark.

PS. I thought the reference to The Economist was particularly cute, since the article referred to concluded nothing like the taken out-of-context quote implied.

Re:Fly going after the elephant

[Mr. Firewall]

Not really. They actually have closer to $40 Billion in the bank now and they're accumulating at the rate of about $1 Billion a month.

Hold it. They're not accumulating wealth at the rate of $1B per month.

$1B per month is their income . From that, they must pay expenses.

They're still ridiculously rich and apparantly getting richer, but not THAT fast.

Re:Fly going after the elephant

[JordanH]

Actually, their income is more than $2 Billion/Month. I looked it up and while $1 Billion/Month is high for net profit, it does appear that they have been doing between $0.6 and $0.7 Billion/Month for the last two years.

Source.

Also, I believe they make quite a bit just off their huge cash reserves. I'm not sure that this is reflected in those profit figures I gave above and may be enough to boost the accumulation rate well over $1 Billion/Month.

Go Sun!

[pilot1]

I'm glad at least *someone* will stand up to Microsoft. Hopefully they'll get split up, or at least forced to make some changes in Windows.

Re:Go Sun!

[Voytek]

You're WAY over-optimistic if you think that anything will ever come of this lawsuit. It has come down to purely a personal McNealy/Gates thing at this point - and I personally don't think McNealy cares about the actual suit that much - he just wants to be right for once...

Re:Go Sun!

[cOdEgUru]

Smaller monopoly calling it unfair over the practices of a bigger monopoly.

Or should I say :

Mr. Tiny Kettle, Meet Mr. Giant Pot
Mr. Giant Pot, Meet Mr. Tiny Kettle.

Re:Go Sun!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not an anti-trust trial. Best they can do is get some money.

Re:Go Sun!

[Anonymous Coward]

so... buy your computer and reformat the hard drive then put whatever you want on it. No one is stopping you.

Re:Go Sun!

[Fred Tourette]

I'm glad too, but you and Sun *both* believe in the Easter Bunny.

Re:Go Sun!

[Anonymous Coward]

I ate the Easter Bunny.

Re:Go Sun!

[Fred Tourette]

The only way this monopoly is going to end is if we users put our money where our rants are and refuse to support said monopoly.

Re: Sun to go after Microsoft

[inode_buddha]

Go for it, man! Whatever you might feel about McNealy personally, ya gotta give him credit for sheer guts and having razor-sharp focus IMHO.

Business Strategy???

[rnd()]

I guess for some it's easier to litigate than it is to spend time/money on developing better products.

To see how confident Wall Street feels about this strategy, look here.

Re:Business Strategy???

[devleopard]

I don't think a chart that shows that their stock has dropped really says anything. Of course, if you compare it to the S&P, Dow, Nasdaq, and MSFT, it definitely has done much worse. Hell, VA Software (Slashdot's parent) and RedHat has even outperformed SUNW - which is really sad.

Re:Business Strategy???

[the eric conspiracy]

I guess for some it's easier to litigate than it is to spend time/money on developing better products.

Hmmm... I didn't see any place in the article that stated Sun was dropping it's R&D program to pursue the lawsuit. Nor did they mention anything about Bill Joy becoming a lawyer, or similar steps.

These are not mutually exclusive.

Re:Business Strategy???

[Schnapple]

If I had mod points I'd mod this up. Microsoft is not infallible, all you have to do is do a better product.

Microsoft's PhotoDraw product tried a couple of times to enter the graphics market. Never did put a dent in Photoshop or CorelDRAW.

Does anyone remember the Windows Sound System? Microsoft tried to make a sound card at one point in time. Creative didn't go anywhere or sue.

And let's not forget how Sony and Nintendo are handing Microsoft their hat in the console arena.

On the flipside, Microsoft tried to buy Intuit to take over their Quicken product. Since this was when the DOJ was starting to breathe down MS' neck, they backed off. Instead, they went on to make Microsoft Money as good as possible. The result? Now Microsoft Money is consistently rated higher than Quicken by critics and its taking away critical market share.

Two years ago, PalmOS enabled devices commanded 86% of the market - nowadays the market is more than half PocketPC.

In these last two examples, Microsoft didn't pull any punches, they were just better. Perhaps if Netscape had kept up instead of whining to the feds they could have beat Microsoft.

And as for the notion that a good chunk of the reason Microsoft "wins" in the business world is because of mindshare (i.e., the bosses all just think MS is better) - tough shit. I mean, suing a company because they happen to be more popular? Sun is crying to mommy. Too bad mommy just called it bullshit.

Re:Business Strategy???

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a better graph to look at would be this one. http://finance.yahoo.com/q?d=c&c=sun&k=c1&t=1y&s=m sft&a=v&p=s&l=on&z=m&q=l It's not sun, it's the market.

Re:Business Strategy???

[nrosier]

Does anyone remember the Windows Sound System? Microsoft tried to make a sound card at one point in time. Creative didn't go anywhere or sue.
Microsoft couldn't bundle the card with their OS...

Perhaps if Netscape had kept up instead of whining to the feds they could have beat Microsoft.
If you choke somebody so they don't have any R&D money left to develop the thing, what else can you do? Remember Netscape used to sell their browser for commercial use. Microsoft just bundled it with their OS (for which you have to pay so they got $$$ anyway).

I mean, suing a company because they happen to be more popular?
Where in the lawsuit is it mentionned that they are suing over popularity? You need a reality check.

Re:Business Strategy???

[Anonymous Coward]

Netscape also used to have a download option as free for personal/academic use as well. I never liked Netscape. On all the platforms I ever used it on, it was a memory hog, massively slow, and crashed on over 50% of the web pages I visited. It got to be the only time I used it was when I had *nothing* and I mean *nothing* else to use, which fortunately, was pretty rare.

Re:Business Strategy???

[drinkypoo]

I guess for some it's easier to litigate than it is to spend time/money on developing better products.

That does appear to be Caldera's business model, at least.

And of course, it was the only thing that could have saved RAMBUS...

And of course, let us not forget DVD. :P Of course, DVD goes to a whole new level; instead of attempting to litigate based on current laws, it actually set out to (and succeeded in) change the law in order to open the way for future litigation.

Re:Business Strategy???

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Sound System:

MS was trying to do for soundcards what they did for mice -- encourage penny-pinching OEMs to make an optional feature standard, by bundling the hardware in with Windows at a lower price. Later on they just flat required a sound card to get the Windows logo.

Re:Business Strategy???

[Anonymous Coward]

These are not mutually exclusive.

Unless Sun has been given permission by the Federal govenment to print their own money, they are indeed mutually exclusive.

Sun, bleeding red ink like it is going out of style, cannot afford to develop better products and fight MS in court at the same time.

I'm sure glad I shorted SUNW at 40.

Re:Business Strategy???

[nrosier]

I've you read my response, I said they got paid for commercial use.
Ever tried IE on Solaris? It's an even bigger memory hog then Netscape 4.7x or Netscape 6.x/7.0 or Mozilla.
I'm not saying that Netscape 4.7x was a good product. Until 3.x, it was pretty good (for it's time) but when MS started choking them buy giving IE away for free by bundling it into their monopoly OS, I'm guessing, Netscape ran out of air (just as MS had hoped) and couldn't really do decent R&D.

Re:Business Strategy???

[sheldon]

"Microsoft couldn't bundle the card with their OS..."

Sure they could. Just throw it in the box with the OS, same as bundling any other product.

"If you choke somebody so they don't have any R&D money left to develop the thing, what else can you do?"

Choke? Microsoft didn't choke Netscape... Netscape was one of the first dot-bombs... they blew through their financing like it was candy.

"Remember Netscape used to sell their browser for commercial use."

Maybe so, but they encouraged people to download it for free and never really were in a position to obtain money for the browser. Andreesen in his usenet postings said that Netscape intended on giving the browser away for free, and making money on the servers. Mosaic was always free.

"Microsoft just bundled it with their OS (for which you have to pay so they got $$$ anyway)."

Bundling assumes that it was a seperate product to begin with. It was simply an enhancement to the OS, from the start. I'll simply point out that No operating system on the market today is sold without a web browser included, obviously indicating that being able to view HTML is a fundamental feature that consumers are expecting.

Besides, Netscape was going to make their money by selling the server. If you'll remember correctly they started off by breaking whatever HTML common standards there were by locking their client to the server. That is, in order to get some of the advanced features of the server to work, you had to use their client. (I recall they introduced forms in this manner)

This is why IE still to this day uses the word Mozilla in it's browser tag, because early versions of IE 2 and IE 3 had to pretend to be a Netscape browser so that the server would let them work.

Basic problem was Netscape hadn't really thought out their business model very well.

Re:Business Strategy???

[sheldon]

Netscape released the source code to the 4.x browser for free in late 1998, giving us a unique opportunity to view their work.

The Mozilla browser was a complete rewrite from the ground up. Why? Because the Netscape code was a convoluted mess of spaghetti. It was badly designed and hard to enhance or maintain.

The point is, it had nothing to do with Netscape not having enough money to do R&D. It had to do with lousy software.

Re:Business Strategy???

[nrosier]

Indeed, Netscape 4.x was released after MS started bundling IE with their monopoly OS. Netscape didn't have the money to start from scratch and had to patch up an ugly, outdated browser.
It came to a point where they realized they couldn't go on like this (without money) so they decided to try the opensource way. After trying for a while, luckily the developers realized it would be easier to start from scratch.
I agree that NS4.x is a lousy piece of software, but just think how that happened. They didn't have the money once MS decided to kill them by bundling IE in their OS. And MS had plenty of cash to further develop IE. Owning +90% of the desktop market helps a lot in killing potential competitors.

Re:Business Strategy???

[the eric conspiracy]

they are indeed mutually exclusive.

Wrong. Take a look at this article.

http://sunnetwork.sun.com/sf2002/info/features/k ey note1.jsp

The fact is that Sun banked their huge profits during the dotcom boom, and has been able to keep their R&D going just fine.

Re:Business Strategy???

[Rutulian]

You are not considering entrenchment. Much more here is required than simply producing a better product. Photoshop and CorelDraw are just as entrenched as Windows. Nothing is going to be able to compete them out easily. The only reason Microsoft has been able to enter some of these markets is because it has the financial ability to sell things at a loss (XBox) and wait out their competitors. If it was simply a matter of producing a better product they would have lost a long time ago.

Re:Business Strategy???

[Drogo Knotwise]

Perhaps if Netscape had kept up instead of whining to the feds they could have beat Microsoft.

Mozilla has more than kept up with IE, and it was based on Netscape code (even if now it's the opposite).

Re:Business Strategy???

[sheldon]

You seem to be a bit confused here. Netscape released their crappy product when they still had majority marketshare(around 80%). They lost marketshare solely because of the poor quality of the product, not because of any bundling on Microsoft's part. Microsoft had been bundling the browser for years and it made no difference in marketshare.

This is a well established fact that is really beyond dispute and so I'm confused as to why you keep trying to claim the opposite.

Netscape does not have an inherent right to exist as a company if they cannot compete with regards to the quality of their product. This is like saying that automobiles should be outlawed because they are hurting the buggy whip and saddle manufacturers.

Netscape had plenty of cash, they had an IPO that was very hot. The only difference between them and Microsoft is that MS had a more mature development staff and methodology.

Re:Business Strategy???

[Zeinfeld]

The Mozilla browser was a complete rewrite from the ground up. Why? Because the Netscape code was a convoluted mess of spaghetti. It was badly designed and hard to enhance or maintain

The problem there was the way Netscape went about things. They tried to out code Microsoft by adding features. Huge mistake.

I kept trying to tell Marc the parable of the tiger, you walk away from the tiger because as long as you walk he walks and you both walk at the same pace. As soon as you start to run he runs and since he runs twice as fast you are soon caught. Instead Marc went off and told Microsoft that he was going to reduce them to a baddly debugged set of device drivers.

Netscape was not run by the visionaries they billed themselves as. Marc chose engineering talent by avoiding anyone who might rivial his own claims to greatness. Since Mosaic was actually written by Eric Binna using a library from CERN there was much less greatness there than Marc's pr flacks claimed.

Incidentally Netscape made the browser effectively free with the objective of running Spyglass out of the market. The idea was to be a 'server' company the browser was the give away.

What really sunk Netscape was Apache. Apache ate into the Netscape server market which was the intended revenue stream.

Of course nonone ever complained about Aache being given away for free or about IIS being integrated with Windows.

Re:Business Strategy???

[Anonymous Coward]

Netscape's HTML extensions were shockingly awful design. We get IMG and EMBED and APPLET where OBJECT is what we needed, and FRAMESET (which has no non-visual rendering) where LINK is what we needed and already had. Some of their proposals not only weren't described with DTDs but were so brain-damaged that a DTD for them was impossible, and yet they thought recommending markup that was completely incompatible with any SGML parser was okay....

Re:Business Strategy???

[Anonymous Coward]

"...Two years ago, PalmOS enabled devices commanded 86% of the market - nowadays the market is more than half PocketPC..."

Bullshit.

Re:Business Strategy???

[mpe]

The Mozilla browser was a complete rewrite from the ground up. Why? Because the Netscape code was a convoluted mess of spaghetti. It was badly designed and hard to enhance or maintain.

It might have been no worst that a typical piece of proprietary software. Since people don't typically get to see the source for these it's difficult to tell.

Eh...

[Pig Hogger]

Nothing new under the Sun...

Sun has jumped the shark

[Voytek]

This just proves it. Sun needs to stop fucking around with an irrelevant lawsuit the will never be resolved.

Instead, Sun needs to go after .NET with a Java3 marketing blitz, before .NET gets too established. Take all that money they're spending on lawyers and saturate the enterprise app market with advertising and FUD.

Let me clarify that I'm absolutely not joking - I'm a J2EE consultant, and I really like the technology; I don't savor the prospect of having to become a .NET consultant to pay the bills in 3 or 4 years.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[vicious_sloth]

That may be true and all, but Sun really needs this lawsuit, not only to protect itself but to keep microsoft in check. Say Sun did not file lawsuit, then they are in effect condoning M$'s monoplistic behavior. Its like trying to play fair with someone who keeps on cheating.

It is a very unfair fight though, Microsoft has tons of cash and resources to battle with. If no one says or does anything (ie. file lawsuits) then Microsoft will keep on expanding its monolopy and destroying competition.

If Sun wins this, it would be a big blow to Microsoft and open then door to even more lawsuits against Microsoft, and then evetually we may even get real competition, which is a good thing(tm)

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, for Sun, this lawsuit may actually be a money-making opportunity to fund that Java3 blitz you want.

They've got a federal ruling that Microsoft is a monopoly, so its fairly easy for them to roll the dice and hope for a nice damages ruling of $500 million or more. That kind of loss won't hurt Microsoft, but it could provide Sun with working capital for R&D or marketing.

A new development platform needs a period of inexpensive experimentation to take root amoung corporate developers. Microsoft will surely subsidize .Net (selling tools, components and training for much less than they finally intend to), so Sun needs a way to postpone raising the prices of J2EE services to sustainable levels for as long as they can.

Besides, it could also be a matter of principle- Sun feels that their Java project could've been much more successful by this 10 year mark if Microsoft hadn't tampered with it, and they'd like to make it official. And the very fact of a Sun win in court translates to positive publicity thats worth a lot of marketing dollars.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel the same way sun does, and I generally dislike java.

Installing the Sun JVM on a windows machine of someone who regularly uses java apps normally gets "ohhh ahh, look at the speed"'s, which is insane considering JVM can't be installed by OEMs...

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[Voytek]

I think both of our viewpoints are correct.

I, however, am coming at this from the point of view that one can win this battle with technology (or at least the marketing of technology).

You seem to have taken the viewpoint that microsoft has gotten too big to compete with, and must first be litigated into submission.

I wonder who will turn out to have been right - I don't think we'll know for quite a number of years.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[(H)elix1]

I agree Sun needs to keep development focused on improving their technologies. J2EE and NET's version of Web Services really need to play transparently with each other. Other than having a generic VM, the rest of .NET strikes me as the same ubiquitous marketing fluff when Microsoft named everything ActiveX...

On the other hand, if you throw a wrench into their marketing machine with a lawsuit, why not? From a strategic standpoint this is a good move for the legal department - assuming the development and marketing efforts are not ablated.

Like you, few things make me shudder like ASP.NET...

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[Voytek]

The thing is, for Sun, this lawsuit may actually be a money-making opportunity to fund that Java3 blitz you want.


That's a valid possibility, but sad. If they NEED to win a lawsuit to go about their business, then they've essentially gone bankrupt.

Besides, it could also be a matter of principle- Sun feels that their Java project could've been much more successful by this 10 year mark if Microsoft hadn't tampered with it, and they'd like to make it official. And the very fact of a Sun win in court translates to positive publicity thats worth a lot of marketing dollars.


See, I totally disagree; I think it's just whining and the (American, at least) public has never responded well to whining. More importantly, I really don't think the anyone (except the parties involved) really gives a shit who wins.

Do you really think that PHBs and developers are going to read about a Sun victory in court and say "Gee, that Java technology must be pretty great! Let's drop .NET and give it a try on our next project!" ... I don't think so.
If anything, I think the publicity is positive for .NET ... a more plausible reaction from PHBs and developers is "See Sun is still suing MS? They're technology must suck if they need to resort to lawsuits."

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

You have obviously never used ASP.Net. The only thing it should make you shudder about is how ass backwards the J2EE enviroment is.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[/dev/trash]

In the end does it really matter off of what tech you make your money? Starbucks and your cellphone company own you wany.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[tshak]

You hit the nail on the head. I'm from the other side of the fence - I'm a .NET consultant. However, I know that .NET would not be around if it wasn't for J2EE. Instead of whining about Sun's licensing, Microsoft stepped up to the plate and made an awesome platform. Sun needs to take the same approach. Sun does not need Microsoft to make a successful platform, all they need is good technology.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[rnd()]

What ever happened to the "let the best software win" viewpoint? If non Microsoft software is "better enough", then it will win. No business would sacrefice profit out of some sentimental attachment to Microsoft products.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

What ever happened to the "let the best software win" viewpoint?

It was trumped by "Let the cheapest software win" viewpoint long ago.

If non Microsoft software is "better enough", then it will win.

Have you been asleep for the last 20 years? If Microsoft software is "Good Enough", it WILL win.

No business would sacrefice profit out of some sentimental attachment to Microsoft products.

No business would sacrefice profit refusing a feature that Microsoft so kindly bolted into Windows.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[ericsink]

Voytek writes:

> I don't savor the prospect of having
> to become a .NET consultant to pay the
> bills in 3 or 4 years

Why not? I've used Java and .NET, both extensively. .NET is a LOT nicer.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[ReelOddeeo]

What ever happened to the "let the best software win" viewpoint? If non Microsoft software is "better enough", then it will win. No business would sacrefice profit out of some sentimental attachment to Microsoft products.

This is so flawed I don't know where to begin.

Yeah, Microosft, whatever happened to let the best software win?

Were you involved with computers during the mid 1980's? People who just recently arrived on the scene seem to think that Microsoft got to where they are by making superior products.

People don't choose Microsoft because it is the best. They get it because they have no real choice.

Order a new PC. You get to choose what kind of monitor you want. Choose what video card you want. Choose how large a hard drive you want. How much RAM. Some OEM's let you make more choices than others. But one choice they don't let you make is what OS to run. (You can have any OS you want as long as you pay Microsoft.)

This was especially true during the early days. Even if you wanted a competing OS, and there WERE competing OSes for awhile during the early 80's, you still had to pay Microsoft for their OS, even if it was not installed on your new box. This is because of Microsoft's exclusive arrangements with manufacturers. This is how you build a monopoly. By eliminating choices. In 1995, Microsoft finally signed a consent decree with the DOJ promising to stop this practice. Too little, too late.

Once you are an established monopoly, you can charge anything you want. Nothing else to compare prices to. Microsoft's price has gone only one direction. Now that you are raking in the money, you can pour buckets of money into development in order to finally develop good products.

Then a whole new niave generation comes along which thinks that people choose Microsoft because it is best.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[vandan]

Bullshit.
You don't know about the antitrust suit do you?
Microsoft has been in court for the past few years over antitrust violations. This means they abused their monopoly position to force an inferior product down people's throats. The government is only interested in this because it HURTS CONSUMERS because the very 'let the best software win' method fails to work under monopoly conditions.
Get a clue.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

This means they abused their monopoly
position to force an inferior product down people's throats.

You don't know about antitrust law, do you?

There's nothing in it about the merits of the product: the point is that Microsoft used its position to force consumers a certain way. Didn't matter if the product was great or crap.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[rnd()]

Your post contains a variety of items that are incorrect, but several stand out:

OEMs were not forced by Microsoft to ship a copy of Windows on every machine. It is you that is naive. Microsoft has an OEM arrangement that gives OEMs an incentive to buy a license for each PC sold. That those OEMs choose to do so is a result of the fact that 90% of their customers ask for Windows to be pre-installed. The alternate choice would have been to pay the standard retail price for all copies of Windows actually sold.

You may view this as some sort of trickery, but it's not. It is a simple business arrangement. That Dell (and others) decided to package and price their products in a way that offends you was their choice. OEMs could have just as easily masked the price of Windows in the configuration of their hardware. Why didn't they? Because evidently some consumers consider the addition of Windows to be a source of added value, or at least not a source of diminished value.

This isn't necessarly my opinion, it is the outcome of a free market. Consumers decide what they want based on the information they have. This is why companies spend money on ads.

Now let's talk about the Software itself:

Windows 95 was at least as stable as MacOS 8.x, and more stable than MacOS 7.x. The fact that more software developers chose to write software for Windows led to the presence of many more software titles for Windows, and this in turn led more consumers to purchase machines capable of running Windows. This was true for most businesses and many households.

IE 2.x and 1.x were garbage. By the time Netscape 3 came out, closely followed by IE3, Microsoft had won the browser war. Since then it has been Netscape playing catch-up, both in terms of browser performance and standards-compliance.

Before Office 95, competetors like WordPerfect produced superior products. But then WordPerfect 7 was released and it was an absolute dog. Lots of people I knew made the switch then, even after they had purchased WordPerfect.

Microsoft has made similar improvements in a variety of markets. I honestly believe that if the people running Apple had been smarter businesspeople, Microsoft would be lucky to be in second place today. Apple hardware and software had such a tremendous advantage for so long, both in terms of performance and usability, that it is an absolute shame that the company wasn't able to thrive competetively as a business. Some people I've known who have worked at Apple have told stories that suggest that it was managed loosely by self-characterized 'geniuses' who preferred glory over profits.

So, in a nutshell, I believe that if you're in business to sell software you have to accomplish a couple of things, and one of the most important is having a product available now that people are willing to pay for. Microsoft has this strategy down pat, which is why it is one of the most successful companies in the history of the world. Sure, you can imagine better software, and you may even be able to build it. But the fact is you didn't and they did. To the winner goes the spoils.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[AstralSeeker]

Bullshit, I've (or my parents when I was a lot younger) been buying computers since the days of XTs and I never bought one with an MS OS installed. Go shop elsewhere than Dell and you'll see you're free to buy what you want.

The fact is every other thing that tried to compete on PC wasn't very useful, DR-DOS sucked and was very slow with some applications, Gem and pre-3.11 version of Windows were pratically useless it's no wonder they didn't worked. And Lotus and WP didn't fly on windows because they were really bad. I was a die hard WP user at the time and didn't want anything to do with Word, first time I saw Word 2.0 for Windows I switched and never went back, it was just so much better.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[rnd()]

Some economists argue that monopolies are actually an incentive for innovation, because the reward is so great for the company that innovates enough to break the monopoly. In any case, it's a tough question to ask in hindsight, though the answer is pretty simple if you're an apologist for one of Microsoft's competetors.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[ClosedSource]

"They've got a federal ruling that Microsoft is a monopoly, so its fairly easy for them to roll the dice and hope for a nice damages ruling of $500 million or more."

Well assuming the judge doesn't just blindly accept the findings of fact at face value, this might be a tough case to prove. If I were MS I would argue that the district court was wrong about MS deceiving developers on Java. Was there any testamony in the trial in which a developer stated that they use J++ to develop a product, and after releasing it discovered it wasn't cross-platform? Or was the "evidence" entirely in the form of speculation, i.e. Everyone using Java would expect it to be cross-platform therefore MS must have deceived anyone who used J++?

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[i_luv_linux]

What monopolistic behavior you are talking about? I don't see why Micrsofot and how it can use its monopoly against Sun. They have put java on windows, Sun sued Microsoft, and now as Sun wished we don't have Java on Windows.

Sun will never win this lawsuit. It is a waste of time and resources. Sun will eventually go bankrupt and everybody will think that it is because of Microsoft. It is actually because of other competitiors, Linux, IBM.

It is too bad you want Microsoft to loose in the court for competition, rather than demanding better products. That's a doomed mindset, because courts are for justice, you can not go and sue a company to create an unjust situation as you wish. You have to work your ass off to compete with that company.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[Herkum01]

(You can have any OS you want as long as you pay Microsoft.)

Reminds me of a joke, that I cannot remember where it is from though, maybe someone can tell me. It goes like this,

A guy walks into a bar and asks a waitress, "Say, what type of music do have around here?" She replies, "Both kinds, Country AND Western!" Ba-Dump Ting!

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

joke source:

The Blues Brothers (1980)

cheers.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

The obvious case of Microsoft's leveraging their monopoly (and use of OS knowledge) is in the transition from dos to windows. Lotus 123, Word Perfect, dBase and Turbo C(++) get killed by Excel, Word, Access and Microsoft C++. Coincidence ?

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[sql*kitten]

Instead, Sun needs to go after .NET with a Java3 marketing blitz, before .NET gets too established. Take all that money they're spending on lawyers and saturate the enterprise app market with advertising and FUD.

Umm, they are, with Sun ONE, have a click around their web site. Unfortunately, they're taking competing with .NET too literally and there's little strategic focus. As a company that (still) makes most of its money on hardware, they should be pushing - hard - why it makes sense to have Sun Blades and Rays on desktops and Sun Fires in the data center, all integrated with ONE, but their message is fragmented and confusing at best.

They might also need to stop competing with everyone. Maybe make IRIX one of their supported platforms - easier than Win32, which they've had a JDK for since day one. But not Tru64 or HPUX since Compaq is a company they actually do compete directly with - hardware + OS + application software. The perfect integration of OS with hardware is something they have that MS don't. Maybe try to repair their relationship with Oracle, and start courting the workstation software vendors who are busily porting their formerly Unix-only apps to Windows (altho' that will probably require getting the SPARC's FP performance well above the x86).

Let me clarify that I'm absolutely not joking - I'm a J2EE consultant, and I really like the technology; I don't savor the prospect of having to become a .NET consultant to pay the bills in 3 or 4 years.

I fully expect a third party to create a Java to CLR compiler at some point, it should be quite straightforward to do, the only thing I can think of that's prevented it is the fear of lawsuits. In any case, I think you're safe in the 3-4 year horizon, Java is the new COBOL i.e. the de facto corporate development language.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[ReelOddeeo]

OEM's were required to PAY for a copy of MS-DOS with every machine. Long before Windows.

By the time Windows appeared, the damage was done. There WERE other operating systems in the 1983, 1984 timeframe. I remember seeing some novel originals. A unix port. The p-System. Superior ports of CP/M. Operating systems with true multi-tasking.

I'm a longtime Apple fan myself. Apple has made so many business blunders, they should not even still be in business. Any old time Mac fanatic can, if they will, tell you of the countless blunders on Apple's part. The list is exceedingly long.

The only business model Microsoft knows is how to leverage a monopoly. I don't honestly believe they really know how to compete in an open market. They never have had to. (Maybe the present day is beginning to be an exception.)

Microsoft could leverage their carefully created MS-DOS monopoly to shift people to Windows. Then Excel over the predominant Lotus 123. Stories abound of "the dos is not done until Lotus won't run". Well you're likely to switch to Excel Lotus crashes under each subsequent release of dos.

Word started out as a horrible product. Easily beaten by competition. The one thing that a monopoly can do that no other business can do is to just stick it out. Keep improving the product. Most companies that put out a lousy product go out of business. A monopoly can subsidize their development by charging artificially high prices in the market segments where customers simply have no choice but to pay.

Monopolies can give products away to eliminate competitors. MS recognized Netscape as a threat. So they bunhdle IE. Now why would a company invest $150 million into development of something they never expect to sell, and then bundle it for free. Of course, the reason is now well known. All of the internal e-mail came out in the trial. (I followed it carefully daily several years back.)

But it is okay if you still believe that Microsoft got to where they are because their produts were so good that people made a choice to select superior Microsoft products.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[ReelOddeeo]

Go shop elsewhere than Dell and you'll see you're free to buy what you want.

Talk about bullshit.

Where would you suggest?

been buying computers since the days of XTs and I never bought one with an MS OS installed.

What did you buy?

DR-DOS sucked and was very slow

By the time DR-DOS came along, the MS-DOS was already the only thing left standing of any significance.

Prior to the IBM-PC and MS-DOS, you may recall that the industry was thriving with different systems and competition. There was a definite need for some standardization, but nobody dominated the entire industry.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[mpe]

Order a new PC. You get to choose what kind of monitor you want. Choose what video card you want. Choose how large a hard drive you want. How much RAM. Some OEM's let you make more choices than others. But one choice they don't let you make is what OS to run. (You can have any OS you want as long as you pay Microsoft.)

About a year ago I saw an article of the form what will X amount of money buy you from various suppliers. The article commented on how much choice they had found, completly ignoring that not only did all the machines come with MS Windows they all came with the same version of Windows.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[mpe]

OEMs were not forced by Microsoft to ship a copy of Windows on every machine. It is you that is naive. Microsoft has an OEM arrangement that gives OEMs an incentive to buy a license for each PC sold. That those OEMs choose to do so is a result of the fact that 90% of their customers ask for Windows to be pre-installed.

Many corporate customers probably couldn't care one way or the other about anything being pre-installed. Since they will never run whatever might have been pre-installed in the first place.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[azizlumiere]

Since you've seen both sides of the fence, I'd like to know your opinion about the security of each framework.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[a7244270]

> Let me clarify that I'm absolutely not
> joking - I'm a J2EE consultant, and I really
> like the technology; I don't savor the prospect
> of having to become a .NET consultant to pay
> the bills in 3 or 4 years.

Thats a kind of a weird attitude for a consultant to have.

I've been in this game for a while, and my favourite language/environment is the one that pays me the most. Sounds facetious, but its true.

If the highest bidder for my hours wants me to code for .net using VB and C#, using a microsoft tablet and produce DHTML that will crash Netscape, and render perfectly only in IE, then so be it.

Doesn't mean I won't support Open Software, submit code and fix bugs, and in general root for the little guy, but my hobby and my livelihood are two completely different things.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark

[rnd()]

in order to show that a monopoly is a problem, one must FIRST show that it harms consumers.

Your approach to this argument seems to be backwards: that Microsoft has a monopoly THEREFORE consumers are being hurt.

Ok, BUT

[bullseye2]

As a Solaris Admin, (and HP-UX and Linux,) I can apreciate what Windoze has done. HOWEVER, I must say that SUN has done some underhanded move itself. Anyone else remember the little e-cache issue.

Re:Ok, BUT

[Anonymous Coward]

When did CPU panics become an 'embrace and extend' tactic?

Oh, I get it! Sun is embracing and extended the BSOD to Unix machines! Neat!

Re:Ok, BUT

[Zapman]

I remember the ecache issue quite well. I don't know if I'd call it underhanded on Sun's part, though maybe for IBM.

See, IBM sold Sun the cache for their CPU's, and never bothered to inform them that there was a rather high failure rate. And with Sun throwing 8 megs of cache on their chips, you're bound to run into that sooner rather than later.

BTW: this problem got fixed when they started the SAMBRA process (effectivly, 16 megs of cache, 8 megs, mirrored, any byte goes bad, and it's flagged, and the mirror is used only), and was wacked totally when they started using (Toshiba?) instead of IBM for cache.

Now, if you're refering to how they didn't exactly publicise the fact that there wre significant problems... you might have a point there. However, I can see how they only wanted to fix those who 1) Sun they had the supply for (it takes a while to ramp up a new design for the same processor) and 2) customers who had the most need of the new chips. If it hasn't failed yet, why change it?

My company was rather high on the list and Sun replaced every system board, and every stick of ram, and every CPU in both of our e10k's.

For free.

All we had to do was schedule the downtime.

Re:Ok, BUT

[Biolo]

Oh come on. Yeah Sun messed up, but it hardly compares to M$'s constant business practices. The e-cache issue they did drop the ball on handling, but the entire issue was that Sun's supplier of the part gave dodgy components. Sun innocently shipped them not realising there was an issue.

Where they really dropped the ball was handling the replacements, but this was a MISTAKE rather than a deliberate, underhanded business decision. The scale of the problem took time to come to light, they had to understand the issues, and the volumes involved. Even if they had wanted to swap out every possibly faulty module immediately it would have taken time to

1) find and fix the roote cause, don't want replacement units with the same fault,

2) test all those extra modules - after all they are now LESS likely to trust the parts coming in from the supplier

3) source all of those unplanned for parts, in the volumes we are talking about that is probably going to require the supplier to increase their production volumes to accomodate and that will take time also.

If you've got more examples of abuse then give them, I keep hearing of Sun's abuse of the market, but all anyone has ever come back with is e-cache. One issue does not a villain make.

DISCLAIMER - I'm a Sun employee but these views are not those of my employer or sanctioned by them in any way.

Re:Ok, BUT

[jdkane]

The e-cache problem you referenced interests me, so I went looking for some links. Does this news article and this slashdot item with associated article reference that situation?

Re:Ok, BUT

[bullseye2]

You are forgetting about the Non-Discloser agreements they forced some customers to sign before they would fix the problem, and the Directive to the CE's to tell the client that the problem was somthing else and not the E-cache.

Re: Sun to go after Microsoft

[Voytek]

Yeah, ya gotta give him credit for being a complete imbecile, willing to sacrifice his company (not really his anyway, as it's publicly traded) for a personal vendetta.

I hate microsoft as much as the next guy, but McNealy and Ellison are just whiny little bitches - it's just that Ellison can still (sort of) afford to whine; whereas McNealy is taking Sun down the shitter.

Re: Sun to go after Microsoft

[rutledjw]

I dunno. I think I'd rather see Sun focus on improving their products (Sparc and Java) than go after MS. I'm not convinced you can really corner those characters.

Further, I think MS will hang themselves. No, I'm serious here. Oppressive corporate strategies - both licensing and DRM sorts of things will get them eventually. Neither of these are beneficial to the consumer (business or personal) and at some point, MS will have to pay the price. If one is to believe some of the articles floating around, companies are already looking to *nix as an MS alternative

I think Sun should focus on making their products the best they can and spend less time railing on the Evil Empire (tm).

My own thoughts, part whatever

[dacarr]

While Microsoft is effectively competing with Sun for the universal compatibility market (hey, if you can't get it one way, get it another, right?), Microsoft is also introducing copy-protection schemes, and is as far as I can tell dealing with .NET in such a way that it's supposed to be easier for the user to deal with than an "obscure programming language" like Java - however I think Microsoft is dealing with what made COBOL such a pain, in that it's not the syntactic structure of a language that makes it difficult or easy, it's the amount of state one is required to balance (and sugar coating a complex language only makes things worse).

Different things.

[Anonymous Coward]

Having a monopoly that you have got by illegal business-practices and having a monopoly that you have got by doing good products are not the same thing.

Microsoft has been conducting some illegal business-practices but what have SUN have that would have been able to compete?

Have SUN at any time made a desktop that has been really viable and sellable. Honest. Don't think so.

Re:Different things.

[nackrm]

Having a monopoly that you have got by illegal business-practices and having a monopoly that you have got by doing good products are not the same thing.

Yeah, but that doesn't get around the fact that "having a monopoly" is still illegal.

Re:Different things.

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't illegal to have a monopoly, only to abuse it.

Re:Different things.

[Tuzanor]

HAVING a monopoly is NOT illegal. Having a monopoly AND using your position to prevent new competition IS.

Re:Different things.

[MrEd]

"having a monopoly" is still illegal

Nope! Having a monopoly is perfectly fine except that it entails that you play nice. Monopolies are bound to a stringent set of rules about how they can (or cannot, mostly) leverage their monopoly in their business practices.

Using your monopoly in one area (operating systems) to obtain a monopoly in another (web browsers) is, for example, illegal. *cough*

Re:Different things.

[$hecky]

No, Having a monopoly is not illegal, as long as the monopoly position isn't leveraged so as to extend into other areas. Even then, monopoly extension may not be illegal unless it describes "unfair competition," which is a whole different rock of crack.

Microsoft's so-called "monopoly" is only illegal if it provides a competitive advantage in areas of business in which it does not have a monopoly and that advantage is "unfair."

$hecky

Re:Different things.

[Phroggy]

Yeah, but that doesn't get around the fact that "having a monopoly" is still illegal.

No it isn't, moron. Having a monopoly is perfectly legal. Abusing your monopoly power, using it to force your way into new markets - THAT'S illegal.

Re:Different things.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is part of the problem I have had with this trial. When exactly did Microsoft become a monopoly? And keep in mind that Microsoft's monopoly is strictly defined for OS software on DESKTOP Intel compatible hardware. There are lots of other architectures out there - sparc being one of them. Sun will loose this trial simply on that fact - MSFT does NOT have a monopoly on Sparc (Actually Sun does), therefore all this FUD about Sun being harmed cannot be proved in the least. Also, MSFT is NOT a monopoly in the server OS market, the market Sun spends most of it's time in. What Sun will probably argue is that they wanted into the desktop market - this is the ONLY way they could make a case - and its such a weak case that they ought to just drop it - they have never been a desktop company. If they go the java route - judge took care of that Friday - said sun was full of it and just trying to push their wares. Read the settlement opinion carefully - Sun got blown out of the water. I don't know why they are talking this up so much - their lawyer arent that stupid - I think it must be more the the public opinion.

Re:Different things.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun has a monopoly for OS on Sparc architecture - Msft has it on Intel. Sun's doesnt have to worry about squashing anyone on sparc - noone really wants it. If it's illegal, then MSFT should sue Sun for having a monopoly on Sparc.

Re:Different things.

[tshak]

"Web Browsers" is not a market, it is a common task that consumers want in their OS. It's just like saying that MS leveraged their OS monopoly to include a file manager or a TCP/IP stack (remember Trumpet Winsock?).

Re:Different things.

[Gerald]

When exactly did Microsoft become a monopoly?

When it became impossible to run a business, attend college, or do many other things without using their software. It's pretty easy for almost any business to get by without using software from Sun, HP, IBM, Oracle, Netscape, or any other vendor. It's impossible for the vast majority of businesses to interact with clients and vendors without using some form of MS software.

As I understand it, it's also becoming increasingly difficult to avoid MS software on most university and community college campuses.

Microsoft has been a monopoly for a lot of people for a long time.

Re:Different things.

[__past__]

"Web Browsers" is not a market, it is a common task that consumers want in their OS.

It wasn't in 1996. Go figure.

Re:Different things.

[drsmithy]

Having a monopoly is perfectly fine except that it entails that you play nice. Monopolies are bound to a stringent set of rules about how they can (or cannot, mostly) leverage their monopoly in their business practices.

Problem being, of course, that since a "monopoly" is just an arbitrary legal construct, until a court says someone is a monopoly, they aren't.
It's kinda hard to play by the "special rules" if you don't know you have to...

Re:Different things.

[MrEd]

I actually agree with you. I think the DOJ should have taken the OS/2 or BeOS approach and tackled the clear-cut abuse of monopoly powers in Microsoft's dealings with computer dealerships to block alternative OSes.

Still, Judge Jackson did find that they were a monopoly. It's a moot point. Regardless, sabotaging Netscape was just as much a monopolist no-no.

Re:Different things.

[tshak]

It wasn't in 1996. Go figure.

Niether was TCP/IP stacks for Windows, so there was a market for it. This is what happens with technology - what was once an accomplishment that could sold as a $50 product becomes trivial years later.

Re:Different things.

[tshak]

Regardless, sabotaging Netscape was just as much a monopolist no-no.


I was a Web Designer in 95 and 96, and I exclusively used NS2 & 3 and Lynx for web page testing. I ignored IE because it was utter crap. When IE3 came along, I couldn't ignore it, but it was still "IE". When Communicator 4 came along, I said, "this is broke" and was happy to accept IE4 since it was the closest thing to the W3C standards at the time.

The only thing that sabotaged the Netscape browser was Communicator.

hoping for a change in administrations?

[call -151]

Remember that the last DOJ probe into Microsoft was derailed by the change from Clinton to Bush (things were looking promising, but right before the elections there was a go-slow/wait-and-see pause) that resulted in a much more `business-friendly' administration that did not pursue the settlement very agressively.

With this in mind, maybe if Sun starts something now they are hoping that in two years there may be another administration that might think that monopoly power abuse is actually a bad thing and will pick up the ball then... It can't hurt to start something now with that hope...

Re:hoping for a change in administrations?

[Baki]

How is it "business-friendly" to not pursue the Microsoft case?!? It is only friendly for one business (MSFT) but very unfriendly to many many other business.

Overall, it is "business unfriendly". As is commonly known, monopolies are bad and harmful for the overall economy, disturbing a healthy competition and market. It is extremely short sighted and simplistic to describe not pursuing this as business friendly.

Re:hoping for a change in administrations?

[Cid Highwind]

Overall, it is "business unfriendly". As is commonly known, monopolies are bad and harmful for the overall economy, disturbing a healthy competition and market. It is extremely short sighted and simplistic to describe not pursuing this as business friendly.

Unfortunately, the economics of it doesn't matter, only the perception of antitrust regulation as being "socialist".

Re:hoping for a change in administrations?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but 'business friendly' is so subjective. Our president accepts bribes from these large companies, so why would he pursue them.

>>>It is extremely short sighted and simplistic to describe not pursuing this as business friendly.

Well, our president is extremely short sighted and simplistic .

Hell, he'll even slaughter Iraqi children to appease the oil gods.

Re:hoping for a change in administrations?

[alfredo]

Ashcroft is against anti-trust laws, and also, Microsoft was a big contributor to his campaign. MS put a lot of money into the Bush campaign. MS's top lobbyist (Ralph Reed) was also one of Bush's top advisors. His reward was being made head of the Georgia GOP.

Remember, Ralph Reed was the head of the Christian Coalition.

I have no doubt that Ashcroft is AG because of lobbying by M$/Ralph Reed. The fix was in.

Re:hoping for a change in administrations?

[sheldon]

"Remember that the last DOJ probe into Microsoft was derailed by the change from Clinton to Bush"

Actually no. It was derailed by the Appeals court overturning Judge Jackson's conclusions of law.

Clinton/Bush wouldn't have mattered... the case brought by the DOJ was fundamentally flawed(They should never have focused on Netscape), and Jackson didn't help matters with his obvious ineptitude and bias.

Re:hoping for a change in administrations?

[sean23007]

Well, something bad could happen, theoretically. The current administration holds views that are very favorable toward Big Business; the bigger the business, the better. Said administration also holds views that are very unfavorable toward anyone or anything that might be detrimental to the "American" way of life (that includes Big Business).

If Sun is seen as attacking Microsoft (the Bigger Business), it could be seen as attacking American interests. They could find themselves on the wrong end of economic sanctions. After all, they would be the newest addition to the ever-growing Axis of Evil. Excuse me, agents are knocking at my door.

Re:hoping for a change in administrations?

[jeko]

Yea and amen to that brother.

However, wait two years for another administration, a year to get another antitrust suit going, two more years for the trial, two more years for the judgement, two more years for the appeal, wait a year for the Supremes, another year for the actual enforcement...

Either free software will have commoditized common computing applications by then or it will have been far too late long ago.

This really might be it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun got it! They at last made a working open source business-model.

1: Write free software.
2: ?
3: Sue people.
4: Profit!

Gnome on Sun machines.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's damn cool that SUN is going to replace that fucking CDE with GNOME soon. I specially like the Windows-Registry like system named GConf. It makes admin so much easier.

have some guts then and refuse go .NET

[Anonymous Coward]

have some guts then and refuse go .NET
also have gust to just refuse do the Microsoft thing. It is Microsofts customers that have build that company. Yes it hurts to fight when your oponant fights dirty, but in some way you gotta fight.

Moby Dick

[CatWrangler]

Ahab McNealy was entertaining for a while, but enough is enough. He needs to regroup, realize that as odeous as Microsoft is, he needs to focus his energy elsewhere for the time being.

The Great White Whale will still be there, fat and bloated, and will have it's justice eventually.

Tilting at windmills can be fun, but after a while it begins to effect the rest of your business.

Re:Moby Dick

[jkitchel]

I couldn't have summed it up any better than that.

Re:Moby Dick

[Anonymous Coward]

Mixing Moby Dick with Don Quixote weakened your premise. All that literature, and you still don't know the difference between 'effect' and 'affect.'

Horse hockey

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess for some it's easier to litigate than it is to spend time/money on developing better products

Developing better products have nothing to do with it. MS wouldn't be where it is today if it had to depend on developing better products (and there's not much danger of that happening). It's about being the toughest meanest, sneakiest, breaking the rules (MS was found guilty of anti-trust violations, remember?) and buying influence to avoid severe penalties. Welcome to the new business world.

Re:Horse hockey

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, I do think that majority of their products are simply better than anything competition has to offer.
What are you going to do ? Accuse of being "ignorant" ?

Re:Horse hockey

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm. I'd think it is because MS provide the best products for the money.
Don't think so? why is everybody buying their products? Even Sun employees run Windows on their laptops (you did not know that did ya)
Yes, they are the sneakiest thoughest meanest in the field. All that only shows that Billy has been more successful than Scotty in rounding up the kids on the street. Scotty would have loved to do the same but he failed... so he does what he's best at... whines to mummy doj.

Re:Horse hockey

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I'm simply going to ask you if you've ever used exchange...

stop using decimal

[Anonymous Coward]

Reformat in hexadecimal.

Sun to continue to go after Microsoft...

[mskfisher]

Am I the only one that got the image of a dour-faced Sol vengefully thrashing at Microsoft with solar flares?

Precedent

[phorm]

Once one group wins against MS, it sets a nice precedent for others to go and sue their monopolistic ass. Law is very much about precedent, so where 1 case has gone subsequent cases will often go as well.

Re: Sun to go after Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

I also believe that Microsoft will eventually collapse under its own weight, and I believe that security will be the crushing blow. I do not believe that Microsoft can produce a more secure product without changing their basic architecture. At the moment, it seems that everything interacts with everything in an uncontrolled fashion, raising the possibility of future hacks that will make Melissa look harmless.

The reason for the lawsuit seems to be to make sure
Microsoft doesn't take actions to destroy Java that, although they will ultimately fail, will create great pain in the meantime. They already have announced a lack of support for Java. It seems that everything that Microsoft does creates bizarre side effects. They don't have to explicitly take actions to prevent Java plug-ins. All they have to do is fail to correct those bugs that affect Java plug-ins.

Open Source Java == heavy marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

The key thing that they need to do is opensource Java. That would get Java in every distribution. Ideally, it would be LGPL, but if they wanted to get money from embedded versions of Java, a GPL/proprietary dual license (a la Troll Tech) would be more than enough.

JBoss has a tiny advertising budget yet it's known by nearly all J2EE developers. Despite all marketing blutz relating to ASP, JSP, and ISS, the most popular technologies on the web are Perl, PHP, and Apache.

The reason for this is simple: Word of mouth advertising is more powerful than any marketing campaign out there.

Sun doesn't open source Java because wants to keep control of the Java base. Open sourcing doesn't mean that you lose control. TrollTech has perfect control over the Qt base. OpenOffice and Mozilla have perfect control of their bases. They have this control because they have good maintainers.

Ada, OTOH, was controlled to death by the DOD and its crazy certification. Lots of non-certified Ada implementations existed and many didn't have all the features of "the standard". In the end, that control ultimately killed Ada as a major language (Note, it's a popular myth that Ada's complexity killed it. That's not true. Ada is *less* complex than C++ and it's a good deal more understandable).

Re:Open Source Java == heavy marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

> The point being: if Sun gets 90% of all sites
> running its dog food (J2EE, JSP, etc etc) yet
> doesn't make any money off it because its all
> stadnards based open-source GPL'd/LGPL'd stuff,
> well then, all they've done is advance teh state
> of computing - not run a successful business. MS
> could continue its whole .NET thing with even
> that 10% of the market because they are making
> money from each site that uses its dogfood.

They key thing is, Sun will get money from Java if they adopt the adopt the Troll Tech model of licensing Java (GPL for open source, proprietary for closed source).

As it stands now, Sun is in risk of losing it's control of Java.
* JBoss and OpenEJB exist and are gaining market share.
* IBM's Eclipse is gaining market share from Sun's Netbeans. It's faster, more extensible, and it uses native widget sets without sacrificing portability.
* GNU Classpath is becoming a solid platform for Java. The only thing GNU Classpath really needs is good AWT and Swing support. Fortunately, IBM's SWT already exists and can be used with GCJ and GNU Classpath. Once someone is able to compile Eclipse with GNU Classpath, the Eclipse development environment (and it's SWT widget set) will be a part of all major Linux distributions. AWT and Swing will become ignored by open source developers.
* Apache's Jakarta is starting to become the place where defacto standards like Struts and AXIS are created. Sun has no control over any of this and doesn't directly make any money from it either.
* About the only thing they do control and get money from is the Java Community Process.

Right now, Sun has a chance to extend its leadership through adopting openess. If they don't, Sun may end up losing control of Java to open source and IBM.

Re:Open Source Java == heavy marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

most popular technologies on the web are Perl, PHP, and Apache

Maybe for home pages and free sites, but the majority of real ecommerce sites that actually make money run IIS.

Re:Open Source Java == heavy marketing

[ClosedSource]

"That would get Java in every distribution."

So what? I think Sun's instructions to the attorney's general to require MS to distribute Sun's JVM, was based soley on ego. It wouldn't have rescued Java from the desktop oblivion it currently enjoys. I don't think having Java in every distribution of Linux would have any effect on Sun's bottom line either unless they intend to charge a per copy fee.

Re: Sun to go after Microsoft

[inode_buddha]

Yeah I gotta agree with you on that, about MS eventually hanging themselves. As far as focus goes, I really meant SunONE, having recently read an interview with McNealy and it was obvious that's where all his focus is. Not that I'm any kind of Sun expert or anything; I just think they have cool hardware and definitely a strong *nix background.

litigation

[Nobley]

heck, its a good time to be a lawyer isnt it,.. How long until Microsoft starts suing Microsoft I wonder.

Re:litigation

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha! This is the funniest observation I've seen in a long time. Thanks! :^)

"feature"

[Anonymous Coward]

For a "new feature" that was pretty darn short.

Re: Sun to go after Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

McNealy is Sun's Ken Olsen. For those that don't know, Ken killed DEC by refusing to adopt his company to the new world.

Re: Sun to go after Microsoft

[BuncoJay]

Guts or stupidity. He is no more than a jealous little kid playing with our money. Everyone will have to raise prices to cover the friggin lawyers! Why not spend the $$$ going forward to better things?

What if MS is actually getting better?

[RealityThreek]

The usual opinion seems to be that MS will eventually bring itself down because of oppressive licensing tactics, etc.

The unfortunate thing is that they have actually been getting better in stability and security in their products. If they continue to improve their products to a point where they are actually half-decent, the only upperhand we'll still have is that opensource software is free as in beer.

I like seeing opensource stuff because it is free, but also because it's an alternative. Having competition means innovation and better products all around. But if people stop seeing Microsoft software as crappy and crash-prone then what incentive is there to switch away from it?

Re:What if MS is actually getting better?

[korgull]

So, what you're saying is that there's actually no advantage in using Microsoft windows.
It's expensive, not open and the quality isn't that good either (just getting better).

Well, I did draw that conclusion about 5 years ago so actually they seem to haven't improved much.

Re:What if MS is actually getting better?

[J. J. Ramsey]

"The unfortunate thing is that they have actually been getting better in stability and security in their products. If they continue to improve their products to a point where they are actually half-decent, the only upperhand we'll still have is that opensource software is free as in beer."

"Free as in beer" still won't be the only advantage that Open Source has.

First, "free as in speech" has its uses, too. Even non-developers benefit from having lots of programmers' eyeballs available to find bugs, backdoors. There is also the advantage of not having EULAs that have things like "phone-home" clauses buried in the legalese, or having to keep track of just how many legal copies one has.

Second, most Open Source products have the advanage of not coming from vendors that one wouldn't or shouldn't buy a used car from. MS, by contrast, has had such a record of dishonesty, i.e. the misleading error message that Win3.1 betas showed when installed on DR-DOS, astroturfing, Halloween Documents, the short-lived Mac-to-PC switch ad, that they are not a vendor that should be trusted with anything critical. How can one tell if an MS Service Pack or hot fix actually does what Microsoft says it does? How can one be sure that a habitual deceiver isn't lying? Actually, here, the "free as in speech" thing ties back into the trust issue. With Open Source, one can audit the code if one is truly paranoid. Trust isn't as necessary. With MS closed-source stuff, one has to take MS at its word that it is kosher.

Re:What if MS is actually getting better?

[ClosedSource]

"Even non-developers benefit from having lots of programmers' eyeballs available to find bugs, backdoors."

But is this really happening to any significant degree? The last thing most programmers want to spend time doing is going over someone elses code looking for bugs. Getting paid to do it is one thing, doing it for nothing is something else.

"With Open Source, one can audit the code if one is truly paranoid. Trust isn't as necessary."

Any significant application will take a lot of time and money to audit and even more to modify if there is a problem. If a company is that paranoid perhaps it would be more cost effective to go back to pen and paper and drop computers all together.

Re:What if MS is actually getting better?

[RealityThreek]

IMO, you are absolutely right when you say it being "Free as in speech" is a big advantage. However, neither of our opinions will make open source software competitive to MS's products in the mainstream market. The average person could care less about the source being available. And if open source stuff doesn't dent MS's products, how's it supposed to promote innovation? Competition breeds innovation, non-competitive alternative products do not necessarily.

Re:What if MS is actually getting better?

[t_parker16]

incentive: expensive, oppressive. or maybe u wanna buy me a copy of MS word?

give unto microsoft what is microsoft's.

Re:What if MS is actually getting better?

[mpe]

The usual opinion seems to be that MS will eventually bring itself down because of oppressive licensing tactics, etc.

More likely they will come down because of their dodgy accounting tricks. No company can have an ever increasing profit long term.

Re:What if MS is actually getting better?

[mpe]

First, "free as in speech" has its uses, too. Even non-developers benefit from having lots of programmers' eyeballs available to find bugs, backdoors. There is also the advantage of not having EULAs that have things like "phone-home" clauses buried in the legalese, or having to keep track of just how many legal copies one has.

Not having EULAs to worry about at all. Having the source means that software users cannot be tied to a specific supplier or maintainer. Effectivly what open source can do is change software from being a psudo secondary industry into a tertiary industry. Where demand for new features is user/customer lead.

Actually, here, the "free as in speech" thing ties back into the trust issue. With Open Source, one can audit the code if one is truly paranoid. Trust isn't as necessary. With MS closed-source stuff, one has to take MS at its word that it is kosher.

There's still a trust issue, but you are choosing who to trust, from your own employees or contractors you are paying. If you pay someone to do a job they don't come with an EULA saying you can't sue them if they don't do a decent job.

A useful link Re: Sun

[inode_buddha]

here's a decent interview with Scott McNealy from Linux Magazine, check it out at http://www.linux-mag.com/2002-08/mcnealy_01.html

Re: Sun to go after Microsoft

[Tuzanor]

Further, I think MS will hang themselves. No, I'm serious here. Oppressive corporate strategies - both licensing and DRM sorts of things will get them eventually.

This may be true, but I don't think that anybody can predict exactly what will happen. Look at IBM, fifteen years ago THEY were the Microsoft of the computing world. Everybody hated them, but they used them because there was no real alternative.

Now IBM is still a HUGE company, but we no longer consider them "evil". My opinion is that is where Microsoft will eventually head. A big company that still has a lot of clout, but will no longer be the defacto company that nobody can challenge. :-/

Limitted scope of original trial

[Space Coyote]

It's actually a good thing for Sun that the antitrust trial focused almost exclusively on the browser issue. And the findings of fact still stand, whether the DoJ crumpled or not.

Microsoft's ability to bribe politicians is one thing, but it doesn't grant them immunity from legal action on the part of those they may have wronged in the past. (I'll reserve judgment on their guilt until more evidence is presented, but I wouldn't put it past them considering what they did to Apple, Borland or Netscape)

Re:Limitted scope of original trial

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure there are laws to deal with slander. Unless you have proof, you shouldn't go around saying that Microsoft has bribed politicians. I certainly haven't seen anything that could remotely hint that M$ bribed politicians. If you know more than I do, please share the information with the community (isn't that what open source is all about?)

Re:Limitted scope of original trial

[rgbrenner]

Maybe you should take a look at opensecrets.org. Consider the following:

• Under the group "Communications/Electronics" MS doesnt show up in the top 20 until 1998. They gave $1,365,296, 2/3rds of that going to republicans.
• Year 2000, election year, MS was the second largest contributor, giving $4,671,353. Remember that year was a close race, so MS devided it about evenly, giving 47% to the democrats and 53% to the republicans.
• MS drops to #4 in the list, giving $2,955,028, 2/3rds to the republicans.

Even if they werent buying off the administration, someone could certainly draw that conclusion considering that Microsofts donations amounted to almost nothing before the anti-trust suit started.

Re:Limitted scope of original trial

[Anonymous Coward]

These are legal donations, in full compliance with the law, not bribery. Again, I see a lot of heated debate and some people seem to believe that they can slander without consequences.

Companies such as Sun Microsystems or AOL made campaign contributions prior to the start of the M$ antitrust case and still I don't see anybody here linking the two ... and unless you have proof of that link you shouldn't.

It is one thing for a company to make campaign donations. It is another thing to buy a politician's influence.

Some people on this board should have a little more respect for the democratic and judicial systems and should not throw around accusations when they don't have the beginning of a proof. Just because a judicial decision wasn't the right one in *your* opinion doesn't mean the world is a corrupt place.

Re:Limitted scope of original trial

[Anonymous Coward]

I didnt say that it was illegal, but if they werent giving the money in order to buy the politicians influence, then why would they give millions of dollars to them?

A company isnt suppose to throw money down the drain (and if they werent getting anything out of it, that would be exactly what they would be doing).

lawsuits last hope to keep M$ in check

[fermion]

Continuing lawsuits will be the only way to stop the M$ creature from consuming everything in it's path and creating a monoculture in the software and hardware market. We all see XBox and we all see where it is going. A thriving market need competition and challenge. M$, Intel, and AMD does not provide enough diversity for survival. The U.S. government has shown it will not protect the free market from terrorists.

You can talk about lack of quality from Sun, Apple, Linux, SGI all day long, but if you believe in free markets, that talk holds no water. Many people pay a lot of money for the above products when it would often be simpler and less expensive to buy an old intel machine a steal a copy of windows. Yet the above companies survive.

M$ is bringing investors and, to a larger degree, brokers a lot of profits. From that point of view the demise of Sun, probably bad for the long term, would be great for the short term as it would remove yet another thorn in M$ side.

The fact is that Sun, Apple, and everyone else makes better products because of M$. M$ makes better products because of everyone else. The same goes for the Intel, AMD, Motorola and AMD.

M$ wants the next step to a closed commodity box in which they control the hardware, software,and access. I do not think that this is a bad for certain applications. However, without competition, and without the lawsuits, this is all we will have for most applications.

Re:lawsuits last hope to keep M$ in check

[tshak]

Continuing lawsuits will be the only way to stop the M$ creature from consuming everything in it's path

No, continuing innovation will be the only way to stop MS. Look at Apple. They finally innovated after being stale for all these years (iMac, iBooks, OS X, iPod, etc.), and aside from price they are competing very well with MS.

Re:lawsuits last hope to keep M$ in check

[Raiford]

You can talk about lack of quality from Sun, Apple, Linux, SGI all day long, but if you believe in free markets, that talk holds no water. Many people pay a lot of money for the above products when it would often be simpler and less expensive to buy an old intel machine a steal a copy of windows. Yet the above companies survive.

IMO Sun, Apple and SGI all have had more check marks in the quality column than Microsoft. This was particularly true in the 90s. Why ? Because the level of technology, expertise and engineering competence at these companies was higher. Microsoft has caught up in the quality level since 2000 but it has been, as you pointed out, due to the efforts of others. WinNT was the first Microsoft product to really represent any kind of impressive technology and Gates had to acquire that level of expertise from DEC. That is when the quality first started to appear and every MS product since has been builty on that technology.

Re:lawsuits last hope to keep M$ in check

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't beat a monopoly by being better. We have anti-trust laws because a monopoly can twist your customers' arms and keep them from doing business with you even if they'd like to.

As for Apple's innovations:

iMac

I've seen proprietary, expensive, underpowered computers with tiny builtin monitors before, though I'll grant you they used to be beige.

iBook

It's ... a laptop. The screen is relatively nice, the keyboard is still awful (flat and small), and if you paint it you'd have real trouble telling it from a high-end IA32 laptop.

OS X

NeXTSTEP has been around for a decade. In fact Apple resorted to using it because they gave up on creating their own innovative system!

iPod

The first solid-state music player was innovative. Tossing in a hard drive is obvious. Doing it after watching the trend unfold for a few years is laughable.

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[account_deleted]

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Broad Generalizations go nowhere

[Anonymous Coward]

"Well, since this one product was rated better, its corporate survival of the fittest"

This does not apply to the IE/Netscape issue.

Back when IE started being bundled, it was bad. Horribly bad.

Netscape clearly had the better product. It was fast, small, and had the latest bells and whistles like Java, Javascript, cgi support, and a whole host of other things we take for granted today.

Back then, IE was little more than an explorer hack to view web pages instead of folder contents. It had mediocre support, if any, for the latest technologies of the time, in addition to it being slow and bloated.

Microsoft started bundling IE with Windows, and shut Netscape out, effectively killing Netscape's marketshare within 18 months.

This is not some fiction story from the newspaper, and this is not a "what if" from an Economics textbook.

This really happened, and it is one of the examples of prime examples of when market forces fail. A better product should always succeed in the market. It doesn't always happen that way, especially when there is a monopoly around.

Re:Broad Generalizations go nowhere

[TheAncientHacker]

Nope

IE1: Was awful. Was bundled with Windows. Went nowhere.

IE2: Was Better. Was bundled with Windows. Got a little market share.

IE3: Was on a par with Netscape and maybe a little better. Was bundled with Windows. Got some market share.

IE4: Blew Netscape away. Was bundled with Windows. Owned the market.

The bundling never changed. What changed was that IE got better and better and Netscape sat on their collective asses and whined about how unfair it was that they weren't guaranteed market share.

Re:Broad Generalizations go nowhere

[sheldon]

Microsoft didn't really bundle IE with Windows until the release of Windows 98 in the summer of 1998. While IE 2 did come with NT4, and IE 3 shipped with some OEM versions of Win95, they were insignifigant.

IE 4.x was released in late 1997. Up until this point Microsoft didn't command more than about 10-20% of the market.

After the release of IE4, Microsoft marketshare began to increase. By the end of 1998 they had around 30-40%. At this point Netscape abandoned the browser market, releasing the source to Navigator.

Microsoft then went on to release 4.01, 5.0, 5.01, 5.5, and finally 6.0. With each release their market share increased. They didn't get above 50% until after the release of the 5.0 browser.

"Microsoft started bundling IE with Windows, and shut Netscape out, effectively killing Netscape's marketshare within 18 months."

No, Netscape abandoned the market while they still had majority share.

"This is not some fiction story from the newspaper, and this is not a "what if" from an Economics textbook."

Actually your interpretation is fiction.

"A better product should always succeed in the market. "

The better product did succeed. In this case it was IE 4.0. The Netscape 4.x browser by comparison was quite bad, this was largely due to Netscape getting into a battle over HTML standards, most notably CSS1. Netscape lost, and they tried to quickly shoehorn support for the new standards in, which resulted in unstable HTML rendering.

Go read any of many articles out there on the internet discussing trying to write HTML which renders under Netscape 4.x. The product is pretty much universally hated by web developers.

Re:Broad Generalizations go nowhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Alot of people thought netscape was a piece of crap. The early IEs were just less crap, and I believe that's what caused most people to move. Unfortunately for Netscape, MSFT made very quick improvements. How do you explain all the dot releases that were not in the base OS that had market share? People were downloading IE updates - they could have just as easily downloaded Netscape updates.

Re:Broad Generalizations go nowhere

[drsmithy]

IE4: Blew Netscape away. Was bundled with Windows. Owned the market.

The thing everyone seems to forget is that IE4 was *not* bundled with Windows until Windows 98 and for some time (~6 months IIRC) before that was only available as a download. It was during this time that IE's marketshare *really* started to boom, demonstrating that IE most clearly was winning on its merits.

Re:Broad Generalizations go nowhere

[Anonymous Coward]

So, assuming that the knowledge they had of the internals of the OS didn't help them, the ability to spend tons of their monopoly money waiting for the product to develop, and pressure applied to anyone dependent on windows (kind of need it to sell PC's, right? ) it was a clean win for Microsoft.

Re:Broad Generalizations go nowhere

[sql*kitten]

Netscape clearly had the better product. It was fast, small, and had the latest bells and whistles like Java, Javascript, cgi support, and a whole host of other things we take for granted today.

It's tempting to blame Microsoft for Netscape's failure, but it's not what happened. To understand this, you must understand Netscape's strategy: to create demand for server products. What mattered to the business plan was there were lots of people with browsers demanding content from servers, and Netscape developed their browser for the sole reason of seeding the market.

I'm not making this up, here are some quotes from the founders:

Skeptics continue to wonder about Netscape's strategy: How can a company that aspires to dominate a market give away its core product? In fact the Navigator, while certainly Netscape's most famous product, is not its core product. The Navigator is the market-maker by which Netscape establishes a standard. Its growing collection of server products -- complex software that companies use to post information on the Web and conduct electronic commerce --are the revenue generators through which Netscape will earn the bulk of its profits.

"Netscape builds printing presses," says President James Barksdale. "But first I've got to teach everybody to read, or there won't be any publishers."

Jim Clark offers a simpler explanation. "This is not freeware," he says, "this is marketware."

What killed Netscape is that they overreached themselves; version 1.x of their server products were the first serious products on the market, version 2.x were very good (NES 2.01 is still probably the best webserver I have deployed) but 3.x were terrible: buggy and slow. That's what caused their collapse, people stopped buying their server products. By the time they lost the browser war, it was irrelevant anyway.

Re:Broad Generalizations go nowhere

[Anonymous Coward]

This decision occurred after IE was given away free, forcing Netscape to give their browser away for free as well.

Back then, there weren't many companies producing products for free (even now, most Linux companies have to make money through support fees) so they had to switch their strategy to selling servers.

What Microsoft did that was illegal was decide to leverage their monopoly on the desktop to win IE marketshare. And OEM's weren't allowed to replace IE with Netscape even when people requested it. Microsoft used monopoly power to dominate a new market and that is illegal.

Now CKK's punishment does nothing to prevent this from happening again. With the oversight board funded and selected by Microsoft, even if the judge decided that Microsoft has to GPL their code, there's no way to enforce it. So civil suits *have* to be issued to collect on damages. Netscape/AOL, Sun-Java, Real they should all sue. But given that Microsoft has emerged relatively unscathed, companies may be a little more fearful.

It will take Sun to sue and prove that they suffered due to Microsoft's abuses of its monopoly and then collect monetary damages to open the gates for other litigants. With all the crap tort lawsuits happening, here's one case where tort law may prove useful.

Perhaps it may even go farther than depleting Microsoft's reserves (which won't be a huge hit, they'll make several more billion in the span of a year) and actually force Microsoft to declare bankruptcy. Then they may have to sell off some assets ... now wouldn't that be something?

Re:Broad Generalizations go nowhere

[gol64738]

The bundling never changed. What changed was that IE got better and better and Netscape sat on their collective asses and whined about how unfair it was that they weren't guaranteed market share.

how the hell can this parent get a +3 insightful? the poster doesn't appear to have a clue as to what happened during the period of 1994-1997.
it's posters like this that attempt to rewrite history with ignorant comments such as this. what's next? oh that's right.. WW2 didn't happen, hitler is a hero and the moon landing was a hoax.. sheesh

Re:Broad Generalizations go nowhere

[TheAncientHacker]

I don't know where you were in 94-97 but I was watching my book on Windows 95 (and IE 1.0) sell over 80,000 copies.

So, yeah, I was there. As for rewriting history, perhaps you should study some before you pontificate about things you clearly don't really know.

Re:Broad Generalizations go nowhere

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is that you're far to biased to be reasonable?

"As long as I get a tiny sliver of the money being made selling crap, then selling crap is clearly better than selling quality."

Re:Broad Generalizations go nowhere

[TheAncientHacker]

No. That I actually have some facts at my disposal rather than just mindless biases.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Sign of Sun's priorities...

[bartash]

Sun has a VP of Strategic Litigation.

The Latest J2EE Is Where MTS Was in 1997

[Anonymous Coward]

Great News...the Latest J2EE Is Where MTS was back in 1997.

And if you want disconnected recordsets there is now a *beta* of that from Sun....something MS programmers have enjoyed since...oh...1995.

You want your app server to handle, hold your breath, transactions, or cacched connections....those are proprietary extensions to J2EE, and critical for any significant app development.

You want Web Services? The *spec* MIGHT be out sometime next year...until then you have to go it alone with whatever vendor you choose....and you had better hope it doesn't change all that much....and forget about portability, the web services stuff is individual to app servers as well.

Java is weak.

But I guess the lawyers are busy.

When did Sun ever compete for the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

If Sun bitches about Microsoft being a monopoly, I have to ask: When did Sun ever produce affordable cheap desktop computers that students could buy, or software that secretaries could use in daily office work? How many people do you know own a Sun laptop? Or a Sun palmtop? When is the last time you ever saw a commercial computer game produced by Sun Microsystems sold at Electronics Boutique? Where are the Sun machines in retail stores such as WalMart, or at the thousands of Mom-and-Pop computer stores spread across the world who advertise in the daily newspapers? Can you even connect to AOL from a Sun machine using AOL software? Did Sun ever pursue this? "Well, AOL isn't used by our target demographic." GOTCHA!

A long time ago, Sun seriously thought about buying Apple...then abandoned that plan. The desktop WASN'T their market at that time, otherwise it should have been a no-brainer. McNealy balked on the price. How convenient for Sun to continue their "Robin Hood" ruse of saving the masses from the Evil King, while Linux erodes their base (think of Oracle switching to Linux). And just how hard would it have been to re-create the Macintosh user-interface experience on Sun anyhow? Look at background of the authors of KDE and GNOME. Just what are those thousands of Sun employees DOING? Sun is complaining about Microsoft owning the Desktop?

And what about their strategy? Sun produces Java for free -- "write once, run anwhere." So then their "Office-killer" should be easy to port to the Macintosh, just as Microsoft does. But wait, StarOffice is written in C++, so it's "unlikely" we'll see a port, according to Sun officials. And what about Sun's flip-flopping: First it was going to be free. Then Sun waffled and started charging for it. Java is Open Source -- but only sort of. Sun is complaining about Microsoft owning the Desktop?

This flip flopping is not new. Consider the recent flap over the Solaris on 0x86 machines. Sun planned to drop support (and even the product) until enough users bitched about it (http://www.save-solaris-x86.org/). So much for "corporate strategy". Sun is complaining about Microsoft owning the Desktop?

And I have never understood how Sun expected to profit from Java. If they thought that Java could be a loss-leader to push hardware, then they got a nasty lesson when their "thin-client" Java-based computers went nowhere. Sun can only blame themselves. Furthermore, if Java is "write once, run anywhere", then nobody needs to buy a Sun machine. Sun is complaining about Microsoft owning the Desktop?

Maybe Sun though they could profit from "goodwill", ie, if they gave away their software, more people would be loyal to them for hardware. Looks like that strategy didn't work, and it only leads credence to the idea that Sun thinks of itself as a specialized HARDWARE company more than a software company. Sun is complaining about Microsoft owning the Desktop?

Dressing up as a penguin ain't gonna sell more Sun computers, Scotty. How many millions were wasted on that stupid advertising campaign saying "We're the DOT in DOT COM"? Yeah, Sun is going to become a DOT pretty soon. And how many millions are being wasted on the lawyers? How many millions were pissed away when those same dollars could have been used wisely in software development or subsidizing lower costs for computer hardware?

The Sun is setting very quickly. Go ahead and sue. You'll only be hastening your demise.

Re:When did Sun ever compete for the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Retarded, honestly sun is not upset and the desktop market what upsets them is the server market that microsoft wants to move in on. Star Office was written a long time ago and large complex desktop software is not something should be written in java. The issues with Star Office/Open Office is the fact that like MS Office it has its own frameworks and platform. By the way Open Office will make it to the mac, Sun simply does not have the money to spend of porting a product that makes no profit. You obviously do not understand their markets and their ideas for network computing. Also losing your workstation market to Windows is also upsetting them.

Re:When did Sun ever compete for the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Then what good is java if you cant write complex programs in it? They are loosing their workstation market to intel, because sparcs are overpriced and underperform. And lastly, MSFT does not have a monopoly in server market. Therefore, what they are doing is not improper or illegal - they can go after sun all they want. The problem is sun is a bunch of pussies, and they know they will get creamed.

Re:When did Sun ever compete for the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

When did Sun ever compete for the desktop? Well, the answer is never. You need to look up from your PC - there's more to the world of computing than the desktop and Sun's focus has always been in other areas.

Sun got its start in the technical workstation world producing networked, multitasking graphical machines when PC were still running character-based DOS. That was back in the ancient 80s. It took Microsoft nearly 15 years to catch up. But Sun's focus has long shifted away from the workstation to the server. The real game has been the battle with IBM and others for corporate big iron. Sun's been far more interested in selling a machine for, say, a million dollars that would replace a machine that IBM sells for 12 million.

The battle with Microsoft isn't about the desktop, that's just a tactic. It's about the corporate transaction processing, data warehousing and server markets. Microsoft wants to enter these markets just as desperately as SUN wants to hold on to them. Microsoft has reached the limit of its ability to generate growth through the PC desktop and departmental network server markets. (When you've got 90% or more market share, there's nowhere left to go). The desktop market is mature and its rate of growth over the next decade will be low: it certainly will not support Microsoft's current P/E ratio.

The reality for all software and hardware manufacturers -- Intel, Sun, Microsoft, HP, IBM and all the rest -- is that the glorious days of rapid growth in the computing technology world are over. The technology is mature. It has exploited every possible niche. Any further growth will be slow and profit hard to come by. Welcome to the 21st Century.

What we're watching is a pack of junkyard dogs squabbling over bones.

Re:When did Sun ever compete for the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people do you know own a Sun laptop? Actually, I own 4. And I know others who own them as well.

Re:When did Sun ever compete for the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

If Sun bitches about Microsoft being a monopoly, I have to ask: When did Sun ever produce affordable cheap desktop computers that students could buy, or software that secretaries could use in daily office work? How many people do you know own a Sun laptop? Or a Sun palmtop?

But thats the point isn't it. Microsoft have a monopoly in the desktop, by fair means or foul. They've been using this monopoly to try to force their way into server space, where Sun works. Hopefuly this .Net stuff may be a change with them actually producing a good server side product and selling on merit, but in the past its always seemed to be a case of using compatibility with the desktop to try to sell servers.

Holding both server and client markets would be bad, as it would enable complete lock in to Microsoft products.

Sun is playing the wrong game

[Snork Asaurus]

I'll bet that in their collective minds MS feels vindicated - the fact that they were found guilty of anti-trust violations is years-old news and really isn't important to them anyway. What is important to them is that they got away with it, probably thanks in no small part to Asscroft and Bush and some well-spent campaign contributions. The media is helping MS to appear vindicated by shouting "Microsoft Won!" and then whispering "at getting away with it". I expect that MS will behave like a petulant child that only received a scolding and a wink for setting fire to the school house and truly exploit their apparent omnipotence from now on.

So, unfortunately, in today's screwed-up world, maybe the lesson that Sun needs to learn from this is to play outside the rules and fight like hell when caught. To the victor of that game go the spoils.

Re:Sun is playing the wrong game

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun already knows that game. Look into the history of the original Java suit. From day one Sun engineers were discussing how to keep their boot on Microsoft's neck. Things like not providing them specs and/or compatibility tests per the contract.

Sun sued Microsoft over things the contract specifically allowed Microsoft to do under the guise of weakening the Java brand while allowing Netscape to completely break Java with each successive point release.

Yeah right, what is Sun doing for the consumer...

[Anonymous Coward]

absolutely nothing, that's what. They never have, never will.

This is just jealously, pure and simple. Why can't Sun make Solaris into a consumer desktop??

How come consumers aren't buying Java apps at the local Best Buy??

McNealy needs to grow up and fix his own shit before he starts worrying about MS.

IBM/Linux a greater threat

[TTL0]

I think that Sun has lost more sales this year to IBM/Linux solutions, than to Microsoft.

fa!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty soon Sun will have to layoff programmers in order to pay its lawyers. Bad business decision.

Oh yeh?

[00_NOP]

If you can't win, litigate.

Alternatively, if you cannot win the arguments you can always buy up the US President and Congress.

Re:Oh yeh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Alternatively, if you cannot win the arguments you can always buy up the US President and Congress."

Yeah, Sun tried that too.

Scott you have real problems to fix

[ToasterTester]

Scott McNealy just has a bad case of Gates-envy and is wasting Suns money and resources. McNealy even said in an intervew a few years ago that Bill Gates is just doing what he has to for the MS stock holders, that if he (McNealy) ran MS he would do anything differently than Gates. Then his is poor track record with Java open source. Java licensing. And constant smoke on his support for Linux and open-source. It's alway I support
Linux and open-source with conditions.

McNealy is just a Unix version of Bill Gates.

Re:Scott you have real problems to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

McNealy is just a Unix version of Bill Gates.

And you are just a stupid version of Bill Gates, who doesn't have the slightest influence on the world.

Re:Scott you have real problems to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you are, but what am I ?

Re:The Reality of Circumstance

[the way, what're you]

SUN just wants a piece of the pu$$y.

Political Unrest Stabilizes Society Yes!

Sun = Microsoft Jr.

[greygent]

Sun has the same oppressive, megalomaniacal practices that Microsoft does. They're just pissed because they can't win in the market.

With Sun, you get the same business practices, but with virtually unusable (unless your IT dept happens to be greatly overstaffed and rich) technology behind it.

Re:Sun = Microsoft Jr.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fascinating, but maybe it would help if you explained why you felt this was so. Some examples of things that Sun has done that you think put them on a par with Microsoft, please?

Also explain the "virtually unusable" argument, given that Sun is the market leader in many categories.

Re:Sun = Microsoft Jr.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Anonymous Coward, since you asked...

Their mail server is close to un-migrateable due to a stupid policy direction on the directory side.

Their apps server is uninstallable due to incompetence and outsourcing of the development to India.

Their Web server is back-ended by Apache, so why pay for it?

They come and go on Linux faster than a bride's nightie goes up and down.

They have no direction, a management structure so deep and hierarchical it rivals the EU and to top it off, instead if using people's downtime to train them, they're sacking 4400 people *from profitable parts of the organisation* and not sacking their useless middle-management.

So whaddaya reckon? Market leader in some areas, patently useless in others. And to top it off, their HR department would be better staffed by Nazis.

Re:Sun = Microsoft Jr.

[Zeinfeld]

With Sun, you get the same business practices, but with virtually unusable (unless your IT dept happens to be greatly overstaffed and rich) technology behind it.

How true that is... When I was at MIT I got a nice new Solaris box with multimedia sound and video conferencing built in.

Only thing was that nobody in the building could get the things to work. The manual had no information and the install disk did nothing. I have brought million dollar mainframes online with less fuss than that machine.

At the same time the Dec and SGI machines booted from CDROM to install... Lame Lame Lame, but the idiots in the market bought sun for the kewl Java stuff even though suns were overriced and unreliable.

Don't blame Sun.

[small_dick]

Thanks to the criminality of Microsoft, and the ineptitude of (now) all three branches of the US government in dealing with that criminality, as well as the current "Welfare for Microsoft" campaign being levied by the US government ("Microsoft Everywhere"), all you can say is "I don't blame them a bit".

This was an extremely competent technology company, one that set many standards for innovation and openness.

Now they are a mere shadow of their former slf, primarily due to criminality of another company, one receiving aid and encouragement by a government that is supposed to foster the free market and competition for the good of it's citizens.

Shame on the US gov't for their toothless mediocrity. Go get 'em, Sun.

Re:Don't blame Sun.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, SUN lost their wits due to microsoft.
Way to go genius.

Re:Don't blame Sun.

[Citizen of Earth]

Shame on the US gov't for their toothless mediocrity. Go get 'em, Sun.

Perhaps the nine dissenting states can stick it to Microsoft where it will really hurt: by introducing anti-monopolyware policies and legislation. That is, if they're not gutless.

Re:Don't blame Sun.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Thanks to the criminality of Microsoft, and the ineptitude of (now) all three branches of the US government in dealing with that criminality, as well as the current "Welfare for Microsoft" campaign being levied by the US government ("Microsoft Everywhere"), all you can say is "I don't blame them a bit"."

No criminality is involved, this was a civil case. Naturally since the outcome wasn't what you wanted, it must be the failure of government, it couldn't possibly be that you're wrong. I'm mean, you haven't been wrong about anything else, look at that criminality claim - oh sorry.

Re:Don't blame Sun.

[Anonymous Coward]

You misunderstand. They aren't interested in outlawing monopolies or increasing competition, they're interesed in protecting in-state companies that make big campaign contributions. Why was Calif one of the toughest states on MS? Sun and Oracle are located in Calif and MS is not - end of story.

Re:Don't blame Sun.

[Citizen of Earth]

Why was Calif one of the toughest states on MS? Sun and Oracle are located in Calif and MS is not - end of story.

So what's the story for the other eight?

Sun should improve their own stuff

[Otis_INF]

Sun should improve their own stuff, like the Java SDK, to meet MS quality as shown in the .NET SDK. Non-developers might start laughing now, but I'm dead serious: MS has the best stuff available for developers: a kick ass developer website (MSDN website) and f.e. a kick ass SDK for .NET (with excellent documentation, tools and examples).

So why on earth should I start using Sun stuff and abandone MS stuff, in a way that makes MONEY for Sun? Sun hardware, their cashcow, is very expensive, and competes with IBM, not with MS, their Java is nice, but MS' material is better...

When I started developing software after university graduation in 1994, Sun was king and if you wanted to use Unix (PC/MS stuff was err... crap :) ) you focussed on Sun's hardware. Today this is not the case anymore: Win2k server on a dead cheap Dell with .NET (free) will do perfectly. So why bother with expensive Sun hardware? Because it runs till doomsday without a reboot? I can buy 2 Dell servers and 2 win2k licenses for these boxes plus a hardware load balancer for the price of a sun server. Such a setup WILL run till doomsday and I still save money.

And IF I want to leave the MS ship, I can remove the Win2k from those boxes, install a Linux distro and start using Java. Sun won't get a dime.

So, looking at all this, the REAL reason Sun has lost a lot of money is not due to MS, but because there are cheaper alternatives which WILL meet the requirements of the customer. Sun isn't the first option for many people, it's an option for a shrinking group of people. This lawsuit isn't helping Sun at all, since this lawsuit will not make Sun an option for a growing group of people AGAIN, will not make money for Sun in the long run. The reason for this is that there are MORE alternatives than the wintel combination: Linux + Java.

McNealy should really start thinking about how to make Sun no.1. again by making Sun a valuable option, instead of crying fool about a competitor who simply does what it should do: make money, and lots of it.

Re:Sun should improve their own stuff

[Overdrive_SS]

I'm not a big fan of Java, but I must say that I've never had any trouble finding exactly what I need to know on their website. MSDN on the other hand sends me in circles, is confusing, and rarely answers my questions, even the simplest questions. I've spent hours just trying to find what MFC classes return for specific functions and either give up in frustration or find another site that has a clue.

This is as it should be...

[MacAndrew]

Actually, natural selection proposes that the fittest prevail. Fitness changes with circumstances. Anyway, the adaptation of biological evolution to social darwinism is an oversimplification and would have pissed Darwin off.

Microsoft it might be argued is not the fittest competitor but the strongest. Lacking fitness (and adaptibility), the distortion it imposes on the market will in time pass. Analogously, if man, the self-proclaimed pinnacle of evolution, isn't careful he will become extinct and the quite adaptable bugs will "take over."

**
Antitrust legislation allows private actors to bring their own lawsuits. When a corporation first brings its proposed lawsuit to the Dept. of Justice, and the DOJ in turn asks, well, why aren't you bringing this? In the Microsoft lawsuit, the primary reason the feds and states filed suit, aside from perceived merit, was the titanic legal resources of the company backed by a nearly inexhautible war chest.

Having the gov't sue is kind of a last resort, and usually not the best one because the taxpayer foots the bill, and they're susceptible to political pressure -- witness the radically different approaches to the recent case by the Clinton and Bush Administrations. It is also likely to be less technically sophisticated than the parties involved, and may be influenced by lobbyists and other peripheral players.

Sun will have the enormous advantage of not having to prove monopoly. They've already sued MS and won over Java. Sun is also more likely to seek effective terms in a settlement.

Oddly enough, the court will decide the case not looking at how it benefits the parties, but the consumer. Courts are reluctant to create their own terms, so the judge in this case simply chose between two proferred plans. Perhaps if there had been a more moderate position she would have chosen that.

I'm not an antitrust lawyer, but I think this may yet result in some interesting results. If you think MS is a blameless "tough competitor," you'll disagree; but the rest of us would still like to see their practices further corralled.

Re:This is as it should be...

[Anonymous Coward]

Judge took care of consumer harm part - said there wasnt any substantive basis of harm. Basically, having this case included in the record makes sun case go down the tubes now. Might want to read it closely. Sun will have to drop - or it will be thrown out.

Re: Sun to go after Microsoft

[Jucius Maximus]

"Further, I think MS will hang themselves. No, I'm serious here."

I also think that Microsoft will die, but not at their own hands. There are dozens of upcoming private lawsuits against the company and more and more will come, given the state of their DRM and licensing plans.

I say that MSFT will die at the hands of their lawyers. The very people that helped them maintain supremacy will suck them dry. How much does a top rank corporate lawyer charge? A damn lot of money, probably several million dollars per case, hundreds of millions of big cases. And even MSFT can't sustain that forever. (Ironic, no?)

Sun's pricing is insane.

[Animats]

Look at their product line. Their base-level SunBlade 2000 workstation has a 1GHz processor, 1GB of memory, a 73GB disk drive, a good graphics board, comes with StarOffice, and costs $10,995. Keyboard and monitor extra. What's wrong with this picture?

Oh, and for $20,000, you can get the version with 2 CPUs, everything else remaining the same.

Those guys are living in an alternate universe.

Re:Sun's pricing is insane.

[sql*kitten]

Look at their product line. Their base-level SunBlade 2000 workstation has a 1GHz processor, 1GB of memory, a 73GB disk drive, a good graphics board, comes with StarOffice, and costs $10,995. Keyboard and monitor extra. What's wrong with this picture?

You can get a Sun Blade 100 for about a thousand dollars . That's quite competitive. You can't compare these Mhz-for-Mhz with PCs remember.

Right on the Money

[waltc]

The fact has always been that SUN has been fighting Microsoft all along to protect what SUN deems is SUN's monopoly--the insanely high-priced server market. This is the grudge that SUN has always held about Redmond--it sees Microsoft as setting dangerous precedents for cheap and powerful software (compared to SUN's) which runs on cheap and powerful hardware (by AMD, Intel, and scores of other companies.) The combination is a death-knell for SUN's operational MO. And SUN has seen the writing on the wall for quite some time. SUN thinks that it ought not to have to compete with Microsoft in the market SUN thinks it has some privileged access to, and SUN will do everything within its power to destroy Microsoft. The way that SUN sees it, its present business model is doomed if Microsoft continues making better software and selling it at unbelievably cheap prices (according to SUN's prices.) Note that while Microsoft was stuck in the Win3.x era that SUN had barely a comment to make about Microsoft one way or the other. It's only since Microsoft began shipping post Win3.x software that SUN went on the war path.

The irony here is that it's not Microsoft attempting to stifle competition--it's SUN! Now that the DOJ-Microsoft settlement has been confirmed, effectively answering the *real* problems the investigation uncovered, SUN's true aim in this matter since the beginning becomes (or ought to become) crystal clear. SUN has never been interested in either the "consumer" or the "free market" or "competition." SUN's motive has always been SUN's preservation of a market SUN has come to the twisted conclusion that it somehow "owns"--and SUN will brook no competition in that market.

Of course SUN will inevitably lose in the end since its vision is so fundamentally flawed. But it's interesting to see the true colors of the people pushing the anti-Microsoft governmental regulation now that the government has proved it's nobody's amiable dupe in corporate competitive struggles.

Re:Broad Generalizations go nowhere (IE & wind

[__aanonl8035]

What you state is not exactly true.

IE 1 and 2 was not bundled with windows.

IE 3 was bundled with OSSR 2 of windows 95,
but was not setup to run. You had to click
on it to install it, and you could get rid
of it.

OSSR 2 was not something you could buy
over the counter either.

IE4 was integrated into windows 95 and
you could not get rid of it.

Good for Sun! Fighting evil takes courage...

[cthompso]

..and Scott has it. Too bad George W. does not.

Re:Broad Generalizations go nowhere (IE & wind

[sheldon]

Windows NT 4.0 ships with IE version 2.0 bundled.

IE 4 was never integrated with Windows 95, it was integrated with Windows 98.

Business markets are starting to take notice

[sheldon]

Forbes recently had an article talking about McNealy and essentially questioning many of his business decisions.

He essentially describes McNealy's vision as reactionary. In that there is no vision, he simply reacts to other entities between Microsoft, Linux, Java and so forth.

Sun pursuing a lawsuit against Microsoft would be pretty foolish as that isn't their main problem. They're primarily losing marketshare to other Unix vendors and most notably Linux.

Re:Broad Generalizations go nowhere (IE & wind

[Anonymous Coward]

IE4 WAS integrated into Windows 95C . Win95B came with IE3 installed by default, but could be removed with a little bit of cunning. And what a pile of shit Win95C was. At least windows 98 had a much more natural integration, despite all the inherent problems it caused. Luckily it seemed to have a narrow window of when it was released as far as I've seen, because it seems sort of rare.

Re: Why do you think that Sun can litigate better?

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of comments here assume that Sun can litigate better than develop. I do not think so: litigation is easier than development. Anyone with enough money can hire a lawyer and get politicians on their side - getting good engineers to work on relevant projects is harder.

IMHO, Sun's fatal mistake was assuming that, while trailing in marketplace, they still somehow have a permanent lead in Washington offices.

After a first successful sucker punch - MS at the time had 1 (one) lobbyist in Washington - Bill and his minions learned that, to be successful, one needs to work on the Washington "projects" as well. Money and personnel were allocated, and you've just seen the first result.

Machine is now completed and is in action, and in no time you will see MS successfully litigating its competitors out of existence - why waste a perfectly good project team, after all?

Once this happens, just remember the good old times MS had just one lobbyist and was competing only in the marketplace.

hypocricy in its finest form

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun has as much to say against Microsoft's monopoly as Joseph Stalin had to say against Hitler. I seem to remember myself having to be told time and time again that "no we can't afford to buy that new solaris platform" simply because of the horribly high prices due mostly to draconian direct control and restrictions from our friends at Sun.

Re: Sun to go after Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsofts attorneys are Preston and GATES (Bills dads law firm....) so the money stays in the family.

Ooops!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I didn't mean to hit the reply button. I slipped on a wet spot. It was from the tears that I cried onto the astroturf that you posted.

Re: Sun to go after Microsoft

[jc42]

I think I'd rather see Sun focus on improving their products (Sparc and Java) than go after MS.

In the case of java, going after MS is a significant part of improving Sun's product. The main value of java is as a "network" language. It is only useful if all versions of java can be kept compatible. Sun's lawsuit against MS's java was based on the fact that Microsoft has long supplied a version of java that is full of incompatibilities with Sun's. This is almost certainly intentional, and has the purpose of making java less useful than it would be if MS's java were compatible.

There's a tendency of users to judge a product by the behavior of the one instance that they have available. Microsoft users judge java by MS's java, and they find it buggy and incompatible. So they conclude that java is buggy and incompatible.

But Sun owns java. If they can get judges that haven't been bought by Microsoft, they can stop MS's campaign to damage java. In fact, they might even be able to get a court order to replace MS's java with Sun's version on Windows machines. Then all those java applets out there might actually work the same everywhere.

Of course, now that it's clear that the US DoJ and at least some courts are in Microsoft's pocket, it's not obvious that Sun can prevail in the courts.

If I were Sun

[Rogerborg]

I'd pay a private investigator to find out how much Judge CKK and her friends and family spend over the next couple of years and where that money came from.

If you think I'm joking, ask yourself this: why do we pay more to more senior judges? Hint: the answer isn't "shucks, because they plum deserve it". It's to reduce the incentive to take bribes. No? Then why exactly do we pay them more?

I'm not saying she took a bribe. I am saying that it would explain the verdict, and that judges are, when all's said and done, only human. They have to put their kids through college and pay off mortgages just like anybody else. And if you're going to take one bribe in an otherwise spotless career, you'd best make it a big one.

Re:If I were Sun

[ClosedSource]

"I'm not saying she took a bribe. I am saying that it would explain the verdict, and that judges are, when all's said and done, only human."

I suggest you read her ruling if you want to understand the verdict.

The idea that she ruled in good faith is much more plausable than believing she would risk the destruction of her career and reputation (not to mention her liberty) for a few bucks from MS.

You don't give MS enough credit either. Even if you think Gates would do this if he thought he'd get away with it, he's not stupid enough to try.

Actually one article I read indicated that she had to sell her Sun stock at a loss when she had been randomly selected to hear this case.

Put it where it belongs

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Sun should invest it's money into making Java less of a steaming pile of absolute horseshit. Then perhaps Sun can invest a little into having someone open a dictionary and read back to them, slowely, what the word "marketting" means. If we don't want Microsoft force-bundling things, why do we want Sun force-bundling things via litigation? I think Sun should focus it's attention to the real reason it lost it's position on the browser/client: Java GUI sucks 50 different kinds of ass, and Macromedia handed them their ass back on a platter with Shockwave. Get the fuck with it, Sun.

Even more important sign of MS's priorities:

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft doesn't have a VP of Strategic Litigation.

Re: Sun to go after Microsoft

[Zeinfeld]

In the case of java, going after MS is a significant part of improving Sun's product. The main value of java is as a "network" language. It is only useful if all versions of java can be kept compatible.

Only useful to whom?

Seriously, most languages do not run on every platform without code modifications. There is every reason why a programmer would want a language with object features without the syntactic crap associated with Stroustrup's dog.

So Sun has 'won' that fight, they now get to keep Java pure and Microsoft have their own language C Sharp. Incidentally the Kotelly judgement notes that Microsoft has the right to make an incomatible VM if it chooses under the appeals court findings, they simply have to ensure that developers are aware that their stuff is incompatible.

So the ongoing case appears to be flawed at best. Microsoft has ceased all sale of Java products. In fact Suns argument is now that having sued Microsoft to stop distribution of Java Microsoft are now doing something illegal by refusing to distribute Java

Sun will die and Java may die with it. McNeally is Sun's Ken Olsen. There is simly no real value left in the company. IBM have handed their ass to them on Java code. Intel have handed them their ass on performance. Apple has a much better Unix based O/S . Linux has the mindshare.

Notice that Microsoft does not appear in the to four reasons why Sun is going to die. The only reason that Microsoft is a threat to Sun is that the Sun employees are all far too busy minding Microsoft's business and spending almost none minding their own.

Figure out who your friends are.

[puppetluva]

1) M$ released their SDK for free because Sun's was released for free. (Sun's existence helped you there).

2) M$ released .NET because Sun created Java. You benefited from M$'s copycat technology - the best of which Sun pioneered.

3) The reason that you can leave M$ and use another enterprise-class technology platform is because of Sun. (And they don't charge you for the freedom).

Sounds like you owe Sun a lot of gratitude. Cursing them for not making more money when you yourself benefited from their actions makes you look like an idiot.

Wait till your utopia bears out, Sun is gone, M$ starts charging for their SDK, there is no alternative in Linux (because Java/J2EE is gone), and you're taking out loans to pay for your beloved M$ non-evolving copy-cat technology.

A fool is someone who can't figure out who their friends are. . . until too late.

Re:Figure out who your friends are.

[WWE-TicK]

> Wait till your utopia bears out, Sun is gone, M$
> starts charging for their SDK

Why would MS start charging for the .NET SDK? MS has always provided SDKs for the various Windows APIs (Platform SDK, DirectX, etc.) as free downloads. Why would the .NET SDK be any different?

A company exists for one reason and one reason only: to make money. Your comment about the original poster looking like an idiot for cursing Sun for not making money when he himself benefits from their actions makes no sense whatsoever.

Re:Broad Generalizations go nowhere (IE & wind

[TheAncientHacker]

Wrong.

IE 1.0 was available either as part of the Windows 95 Plus Pack. EVERY SINGLE OEM copy of Windows 95 shipped with the Plus Pack installed. Every one. (Although it was up to the OEMs whether they wanted it, every one of them decided to.)

Various OEM Service Releases bundled later versions of IE including (as you point out) IE 3.0 being bundled as part of OSR2 and unless the OEM decided that they didn't want to include the Plus Pack components, they were installed as part of the OEM version of Windows.

As for IE4 being integrated into Win 95, nope. It was a stand-alone package and was later included into Windows 98.

How it Really Is

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything that does not kill MS, makes it stronger. And these days, they are amazingly strong. Hell, they run faster, jump higher, and adapt quicker than anyone out there including the Open Souce free-for-all world. And at this point Sun is nothing but a punching bag to work over until the main event with IBM goes down. I got odds on MS.

Microsoft found not vital for life on earth!

[colonelteddy]

Maybe it was just me, but I intitially read this as:
Sun continues to go, after Microsoft
Which would obviously be in contradiction of the fact that the world could not survive without Microsoft products. Is it possible that the sun will still produce heat and light if Microsoft no longer existed??

Anybody else willing to find out? :)

Re: Sun to go after Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked Sun's Legal Counsel didnt work on any of the Engineering for SPARC/Java/Solaris.

Re:Broad Generalizations go nowhere (IE & wind

[__aanonl8035]

"windows 95" was a typo, although as
pointed out by another reply, it was
included in version C of win95. It
basically, ran through and installed ie 4
after installing win95 B.

I dispute your claime that "EVERY SINGLE
OEM" copy was shipped with the Plus Pack
installed. I worked as a PC technician
at the time, and I recall quite a few
Compaq's and IBMs that did not install
the plus pack.

Also, being in the plus pack and being
in the operating system is a diffirent
thing. Quite a few people ran out and
boght windows 95 in a box.

Re:Sun has jumped the shark / J2EE vs dotNET

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing. While Scott was investing in lawsuits and companies like "Diba," those dummies in redmond appear to kept their heads down writing software that outperformed his. (re: http://www.middleware-company.com/j2eedotnetbench/ )

These results make me wonder if anyone at Sun ever worked as a developer in a company or had to deliver a commercial products or services. And for all their claims about their software's maturity and scalabity expertise, just look at the comparisons of response time (linearity in ms vs sun's results). Sounds like Sun has been reading their own marketing for far too long.

Scott is now telling every other business like telcos and banks and people like Time Warner that "you're next!" - boy, I sure do hope so, everytime Microsoft enters a new market segment things get a lot better for me (a customer). Something about competition. Oops, I forgot, anti-trust law is supposed to protect the incumbents, those silly customers should be happy to have the privilege of paying more for less.

So, if MS didn't exist, then Sun wouldn't be trading at less than 5% of it's peak. And a market cap less than revenues. r i g h t.... Something else must be rotten in their books or they would have been acquired by now (if only to liquidate and take the money).

\\Ari

Re: Sun to go after Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at IBM, fifteen years ago THEY were the Microsoft of the computing world. Everybody hated them .. Now IBM is still a HUGE company, but we no longer consider them "evil".

Yeah, but you have to remember why this change happened:

IBM lost all their power.

Then remember the reason lost all their power and as a result had to start actually being a productive member of the industry instead of a robber-baron: it was because of things IBM lost in dealing with a heavy-handed antitrust case.

Microsoft won their antitrust case. Microsoft is, if anything, more powerful than they were at the beginning of the Netscape trial.

What happens next?

Re: Sun to go after Microsoft

[sql*kitten]

Whatever you might feel about McNealy personally, ya gotta give him credit for sheer guts and having razor-sharp focus IMHO

I guess you haven't been following Sun for very long, because McNealy and "focus" don't get along. Sun has flipflopped for years unable to decide if they were a workstation vendor, a server vendor, a vertical one-stop shop a la IBM or something else altogether (see their current marketing campaign around SunONE). The "dot in dotcom" was a disaster for them, and now their sales are being hurt by their own second-hand kit (why buy a brand new Sun Blade workstation when you can pick up a very capable Ultra 60 or 30 for a fraction of the price?). They spent years insisting that Solaris on SPARC was their crown jewels, they fudged the decision on Solaris x86 and now they are selling Linux on x86 machines, this time competing with themselves directly. Or StarOffice - that was part of a plan to compete directly with PCs using cheap workstations running Solaris (the Ultra 5) and thin clients (Sun Ray). It didn't pan out, and they were pretty much forced to give away StarOffice for free (you think they did that out of the goodness of their hearts?). Over the past couple of years their development toolset has been called SPARCworks, SunPro, Forte and now it's SunONE Studio - the same basic tools rebranded depending on whether Sun think the future is embedded, HPC, Internet or "ONE". And Java - for a long time, IBM's JVM on x86 wiped the floor with Sun's on SPARC (may even still be true, haven't checked recently).

Sun have some great products and technologies, but what will kill them is their sheer lack of focus. Right now they need to reestablish the SPARC as the processor for serious computing and establish the Sun Fire/Blade as the platforms for it, and they need to get Java's performance on their low end machines up to the level where it can seriously be used for interactive apps then start selling them in bulk to the people who are currently buying their workstations from Dell.

But the very first thing they need if for McNealy to drop his personal feud with Microsoft and define his company in terms of what his customers want, not simply reacting to whatever MS do.

Sun has _NO_ chance against Microsoft!

[rthille]

Doesn't the sun realize that Microsoft is near Seattle? The Sun has no chance of breaking through there!

Re:Broad Generalizations go nowhere (IE & wind

[TheAncientHacker]

Nope. The only computers that shipped with OEM Windows 95 that didn't have Plus Pack were those so underpowered that they didn't meet the minimum hardware requirements.

Last Post!

[alpg]

In the beginning was the Tao. The Tao gave birth to Space and Time.
Therefore, Space and Time are the Yin and Yang of programming.

Programmers that do not comprehend the Tao are always running out of
time and space for their programs. Programmers that comprehend the Tao always
have enough time and space to accomplish their goals.
How could it be otherwise?
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...