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MS Must Ship Java With Windows Within 120 Days
Suppafly writes "Cnet is reporting that a federal judge on Wednesday ordered Microsoft to begin shipping Sun Microsystems' Java with the Windows operating system within 120 days, after the companies fought over implementing a ruling he made last month."
To be fair, the judge also recommended that Sun ship Windows with Java2 SDK to give developers a crash test API.
Why should the strong be forced to carry the product of the weak? Is it because the unsuccessful have a *need* for profit? Is it an inalienable right to move product regardless of whether anyone wants it?
I have two words for this: corporate welfare.
If there must be welfare, it should go to some washed up individuals who can't take responsibility for their lives, not to corporations! It's not even humanitarian anymore when you help corporations; it's just plain stupidity. It a form of socialism consisting of empty Marxist principles abstracted away from any kind of meaningful social context that would give them even a trace of a vague justification.
I don't like Microsoft's idiotic, unreliable, inflexible, non-interoperable products any more than the next open source hacker, but this is not the right way. Microsoft, and indeed every software enterprise, should be able to take whatever bit pattern they want, so long as they didn't steal it, stamp it on a CD, and ship it.
Sun had lots more experience developing systems (software *and* hardware) than Microsoft. They did the Microsoft thing to mainframes and minis by developing cheap workstations running Unix. Nobody wanted a fridge-sized Vax after seeing a 32 bit Sun workstation. They had a shot at becoming the number one operating system vendor for personal computers. They are losers: they blew it. Losers should die, not whine and snivel their way into an extension of their existence in some courtroom.
What will we see next? McDonald's restaurants in the USA being forced to hand out coupons for Subway with every meal or sandwich sold?
I hope the people at Sun are happy with their accomplishment---that their product will be carried on the back of a competitor's product by governmental coersion, ending up on the desktops of many people who don't even want it. It must sure feel great to be on the JVM development team at Sun right now!