Yours is a typical "kill the messenger" post from a dope who takes his cues from bill and hillary. I wouldn't expect people like you to "get it." And at 52, aren't you a little old to be behaving like an immature teen ager? Think about it.
Javasoft: Ready To Implode?
Hillary Rettig
Javasoft will implode." That's the word from a senior executive at a major Java licensee. And it's not Microsoft Corp. Our source believes that the company is overreaching itself as it begins to focus development on the server. "It wants to do everything from the database to the directory services to the object model, but it's constantly late about releasing even its client-side technology," says our source. "It won't be able to keep up." He wouldn't go on the record, but Joe Herman, Microsoft's product manager for Internet platforms, would. "Sun is going to have a lot more trouble releasing technologies on the server because there will be a lot more opinions, from people at Oracle and IBM, on what should be done."
And, Herman continues, Sun's partnerships will start to fray. "The same tension you see between Sun and Microsoft will now happen with other vendors," he predicts. Our anonymous source, who puts the anticipated implosion date at less than a year away, agrees. "Microsoft is just the tip of the iceberg."
Have it our way...is what Microsoft is telling developers who want Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Java Foundation Classes (JFC) bundled with Internet Explorer 4 and other Microsoft products. Microsoft's Herman, who defends his company's use of proprietary Java extensions (or "enhancements," as he prefers to call them) because "we're increasing developers' choices," apparently uses a different criterion when the enhancement is JFC. "We consider it a middleware operating system that competes directly with Windows, and our policy is not to ship competing products," he says. This policy will hold even after shipment of the final release of Java Development Kit V. 1.2, expected this summer, he tells us, even though JFC will be included as part of the base product.
Another reason to exclude JFC, Herman says, is that Microsoft's market research shows that developers don't want it. "On the client side, it's 98 percent Windows and Macintosh. Why would you use a least-common-denominator technology to work on those platforms?" In the interests of developer advocacy, we asked how many requests VARBusiness would have to compile to convince him that developers do, indeed, want bundled JFC. He laughed and replied, "That's a theoretical question, and I'm not going to answer it." He also offered his own challenge: "I defy anyone to come up with proof that Microsoft has done anything to impede programmers' productivity gains by closing off the spec." |
