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Force Microsoft to Carry Java?
torre writes "Well, there at it again. Sun has now begun its private litigation against Microsoft charging some pretty serious stuff. As we all know it has been widely reported that Sun looks to seek to force Microsoft bundle its java plug-in with their OS.
For a quick recap Sun sued Microsoft to stop shipping java since they had violated their licensing agreement. Sun won, got some money, and Microsoft got upto 7 years to continue shipping their outdated version. Microsoft recently decided that in XP they shouldn't ship their mangled version of java and Sun cried fowl demanding that they ship their plugin.
Now, what hasn't been reported in detail is the allegations that Sun has charged against Microsoft. In brief, they charge that
1) Microsoft has a monopoly in the OS, Web browser, and Office productivity markets
2) Is engaged in illegally tying
a. IE to windows3) Entering into illegal exclusive deals
b. Their workgroup software to their OS
c. IIS to their workgroup server
d. .net to their OS's
e. Active directory to both OS and workgroup OS and to Exchange
f. Exchange server to Office
4) Unreasonably restrained trade
5) Infringement on copyright
6) Engaged in unfair competition
In their settlement they look for and I'll quote "
Preliminary injunctions prior to trial requiring Microsoft to:
Distribute Sun's current, binary implementation of Java Plug-in as part of Windows XP and Internet Explorer.The preliminary injunction hearing is scheduled for December 3 - 5, 2002 at the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in Baltimore, Maryland. Permanent injunction requiring Microsoft to:
Stop the unlicensed distribution of Microsoft's Virtual Machine Java through separate web downloads, instead of incorporating within Windows XP and Internet Explorer, in accordance with Jan. 23, 2001 settlement agreement.
Distribute Sun's current Java Plug-InAll of this claiming that they've harmed java, the Java programming community and intimately Sun's shareholders. Now as the court battle begins its seems that sun has to prove that they are not looking unfair advantage. This seems to be a big issue as it would seem that they could achieve the same level of distribution by merely dropping four million with OEMs..."
Stop unlicensed distribution of Sun's Java code
Disclose and license proprietary interfaces, protocols and formats.
Unbundle tied products like Internet Explorer, IIS, Active Directory, Exchange, Windows server and .NET framework"
Don't allow them to distribute .NET and Java with Windows and let the market decide.
On the other hand, .NET builds upon the success of C and its derivatives, particularly C#, and allows developers to seamlessly integrate the Internet with their services. Truly a godsend.
Here at work (a consulting firm), I co-admin about 30 NT boxes, and we're looking into both platforms for our new finance services, but right now .NET looks more appealing, as cross-platform support is more of a burden than a feature; we can afford to cut off a small minority in favor of delivering seamless, facilitated content to the bulk of our client base.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
This is stupid.
If Sun wants Java to be automatically included with Windows, then they should have to pay for it.
Now, if Sun were to do something bold like making Java a free bit of kit with no charge whatsoever to anyone from here until the universe dies out, then perhaps the courts can persuade Microsoft to include it at no charge and we can go on being happy with things.
But if Sun wants to turn this into a $monopoly$ play whinerant so that they can secure their share of the market on the back of their competitor, screw em.
Java itself is good. Net is, well, MS.
Halo product anyone? Java would be good at this.
On second thought, let's abandon Sun. I dislike any company that relies upon its lawyers to do the R&D work.
Can't innovate? Can't produce? No problem, we'll sue!
Don't mod me down on this. This isn't a flame per se, it is my viewpoint on the current situation.
I love genuine R&D work that is done by researchers, not lawyers. I love technology that works and works well for everyone.
What I have is a distaste for is companies to burn valuable money on crap like endless ego litigation instead of making a product fly.
Someday, like on Stardate 20192.7, Earth companies learned to share their intellectual wealth for the betterment of all, instead of paying the salaries of talking heads on a spring.
Two weeks later, the Vulcans arrived.
What if SUN decided to charge in total $100,000,000.00 for each XP sold?
But what if they did? Hehehe. Now that's trust-busting.
A bunch of babies in men's clothing crying about how they want to make money by sitting around and collecting money for unlimited resources.
Intellectual property is what you keep to yourself. If you want to make money, turn some raw materials into some finished goods (preferably robots that do all the work for us, instead of robots that kill everyone but you and do the work for you).
Microsoft's Java implementation was the best java implementation at it time. Microsoft had the fastest java implementation and much more stable than Nestscape's version (the other java version I had developed for).
.net and compared to java it really looks very appealing. I hope Sun doesn't succeed in stopping Microsoft from shipping the .Net runtime along with its OSs.
In addtion before JBuilder, VJ++ was the best java development envoirnment. Symantec's Visual Cafe totally sucked in comparison.
After Sun got Microsoft to stop shipping Java our client decided to scarp the java project we were working on.
I wish Sun had never sued Microsoft in the first place. Microsoft would have had to forever ship java. So what if they Microsoft added some extensions like delegates and support for activex. The added funtionality was really an advantage. Sun should have assimlated these extentions into the Java standard. Instead java has not had any major language enchancements in the past 10 years. We are currently exploring
Sun didn't like Microsoft including their own version of the Java VM with their OS so Sun took MS to court to stop them doing so.
Microsoft removed the JVM from their OS, as per Sun's demands.
When a user goes to a web-site that uses Java, the user has to download a JVM.
Now Sun is complaining that MS doesn't include a VM with their OS? Sun wants MS to distribute Sun's JVM with the OS? What about other vendors that produce JVMs?
(Emphasis mine).
That's the problem, now, isn't it?
-j
I forget what 8 was for.
If you can't win the game, play a different game.
...he just isn't.
Naturally, Sun can't win this game it's playing with Microsoft so they want to change the rules in their favor. They can't seem to win this current game so they want a new game. That's all any of these lawsuits are, attempts to change the game.
It won't work. If you play on Microsoft's game board at all you'll end up playing a version of their game that they will win. You need to take over the board. You need to shift the fundamentals of what an Operating System is and what Software is. No other strategy other than Open Source and GNU/Linux model* really does that. Change the game.
It's a pity no one has figured out how to become filthy stinking rich at it yet. I mean, Linus should be one of the richest men in Tech... and
* (nods to the BSDs too I'm talking about the OS model as a whole not a specific kernel)
[signature]
I think they're both going to lose in a sense, but MS will fare better.
.Net framework, but they can't stop people from doing their own ISO C# implementation. Such an implementation will be both free of royalties and free of license restrictions (such as Java's) that restrict the vendor from being able to customize the libraries for their own needs.
.Net into the wild, MS has almost guaranteed that it will evolve into a formidable competitor to the domesticated Java.
Sun's control over Java will make Java less able to compete with ISO C#, which MS *won't* be able to control.
MS may be able to prevent others from doing a complete clone of the entire
Once it becomes clear how little control MS has over it, this should be irresistible to both commercial vendors and to OSS developers. MS ought to still do well, though, by having the most complete libraries, the best dev tools, the reputation as "the real thing", etc., so they'll do well.
By releasing C# and at least some portion of
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
/.
Without a doubt MS should be required to bundle Sun's Java with the OS.
This should dovetail without much trouble with the requirement to bundle other ISP's that was instituted back under the original Windows 3.1/95 lawsuits.
In addition require MS to include a couple of alternate browsers.
Last I looked, Sun's J2SE runtime is free to distribute with your software in binary form, provided due credit is given, it is unmodified, and any extensions are clearly identified as such. Mobile JVMs, enterprise features and such are of course another matter.
...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
Gnome mines is in the Solaris Gnome 2 beta, downloadable from www.sun.com (beta3 is just out).
I don't think I'll ever be able to beat my all time best on the windows 3.11 version of winmine (76 on expert! - I got lucky).
# init 5
Connection closed.
Oh...