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To: Mike Buckley who wrote (12327)	12/7/1999 10:40:00 PM
From: Mike Buckley	Respond to of 54805

Folks, Sun's decision to drop their attempt to get Java accepted by a committee as an OS standard is an amazing development in the history of gorilla gaming. A couple years ago Sun thought the committee would increase Java's strength in the marketplace. For the first time ever, a committee was seriously considering adopting a proprietary technology as the entire standard (not to be confused with CDMA being a portion of a committee's 3G standard.) Now Sun has dropped the initiative because -- excuse my amazement that it took them so long to figure this out -- allowing the committee to control the standard "would give other companies ... a stronger position in defining the future direction of the software." Perhaps Scott McNealy has been reading our thread. --Mike Buckley ========================= SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Sun Microsystems Inc. <SUNW.O>, seeking to retain the "write-once, run anywhere" compatability of its Java programming language, said on Tuesday it is halting its efforts to make Java an industry standard. Making the Java language an industry standard would give other companies, such as its partner International Business Machines Corp. <IBM.N> and others, a stronger position in defining the future direction of the software. Sun had submitted Java to ECMA, a European standards body, this spring, after it withdrew from the International Standards Organization (ISO), another standards body. Sun said on Tuesday it is withdrawing its proposal to ECMA, due to similar issues. Java is a programming language developed by Sun so that software developers can write a program or an appication once in Java and it will run on many different computing platforms. "They don't have any mechanism for holding the copyright," said David Harrah, a Sun Microsystems spokesman. "If we gave it to them and they turned around and published the specs (specifications), anyone could do anything with Java and not pass the compatability tests. And compatability is the key to Java." Sun, which is suing Microsoft Corp. <MSFT.O> for breech of contract in its Java licensing agreement, says that Java programs must pass its tests in order to remain 100 percent compatible. International Business Machines Corp. <IBM.N>, one of Sun's key partners in promoting and developing Java, has been one of the proponents to make Java an industry standard, which would loosen Sun's hold on the language. "Our main objective has been to have Java become an open standard," said an IBM spokesman. "We think at the end of the day, these standardization talks will come out for the best." Harrah, the Sun spokesman, pointed out that many protocols and languages that are widely used in the industry, such as XML (extensible markup language), http (hypertext transport protocol) and others, are not designated standards by standards bodies. "I don't think it means much of anything, because Java in and of itself is already a de facto standard," he said.

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (12327)	12/7/1999 11:49:00 PM
From: Percival 917	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

Good Evening Mike, I have one question. Per your post to Michael you stated: There is a very fine point you and I agree on though for different reasons -- the issue that its enabling status is greater than its app status. I think the app side is relatively weak. All the really strong apps allow an end user to input data. Gemstar's app doesn't. Please correct me if I am wrong but isn't Gemstar going to an interactive program guide in the near future which will allow the end user to input data or did I miss something. Joel