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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (8423)	6/12/1998 7:42:00 PM
From: mozek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Cheryl, Why don't you take a few minutes out of your day (maybe hurl a few less insults or something) and read the Microsoft license agreement for Java. Microsoft is specifically allowed to "extend" the technology so long as it remains compatible with a specific set of that technology. The disagreement is over what that specific set is. Even Sun doesn't have the audacity to claim that it doesn't exist. It's written down on a paper they signed, so they can't deny it, only try to reinterpret it. Sun did not sign the same agreement with Microsoft that they signed with other companies. Microsoft refused to sign their boilerplate agreement that effectively grants Sun license to and ownership of all third party contributions. Microsoft also made it very clear from day one that it intended to extend the runtime and classes to make Java work better with Windows. Java is a language. Unless Sun owns it and it's proprietary, then it's not something you can "steal". Sun just wants to prevent anyone from innovating faster than they can, which BTW isn't too swift. Have a great day, Mike

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (8423)	6/12/1998 7:50:00 PM
From: Gerald Walls	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

SUNW stopped sending Java source to MSFT last October, BEFORE the latest & greatest Java spec & libs were released. Since the Java community has gotten so large, it is MSFT that is out of step & will have a tough time selling Java apps. ... McNealy's motto: MSFT.., open it up or bust it up. So much for the charade of Java being an "Open Standard." It sounds to me that Sun is intentionally trying to harm its competition by using its monopoly over Java's definition. The motto says it all...

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (8423)	6/12/1998 8:07:00 PM
From: Bearded One	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

The story of Java is an interesting look at monopolies, market share, and lock in. When you have different platforms, such as Win32 vs. Mac vs. Unix flavors vs. OS/2, etc..., then it is clearly in most developers' interest to go with the largest one-- Win32 in this case. Since Win32 runs on many PC's and most of the new ones, you go with Win32. However, the case of MSFT Java vs. 'pure' Java is a different calculation. It's clear that Microsoft will get a lot of new PCs to have it's Java, as well as all the users of IE 4.0. However, here it's a case not of who has the majority, but of who has ubiquity. PCs can have multiple versions of Java. And because of this, Sun is likely to win. If you are a developer and write for Microsoft's version of Java, then you are writing to "most" PC's that will run Java. But you can write for all PC that run Java by either writing to Sun's Java, or writing to the intersection of Sun's and Microsoft's Java-- which seems to be the actual case for the most part. So it's not about 95% vs. 5% as in the OS wars, it's more like 90% vs. 100%. Microsoft loses if they don't get people to write Java that doesn't work on Sun's version. Microsoft seems to be having a hard time convincing Java developers to use platform specific API's.