Sun and Microsoft Settle Litigation 427
spurious cowherd writes "According to The Register Sun Microsystems & Microsoft have reached a settlement in their several lawsuits aainst each other. Sun gets $2B and both parties agree to share intellectual property." There's a press release to read as well.
Re:Does this mean Sun will be profitable this quar (Score:3, Informative)
print the whole headline please (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.yahoo.com/_ylh=X3oDMTB1c2ZmZzF2BF9TAz I3 MTYxNDkEdGVzdAMwBHRtcGwDbnMtYmV0YQ--/s/171067
Sun Settles With Microsoft, Cuts Jobs
17 minutes ago
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By MAY WONG, AP Technology Writer
SAN JOSE, Calif. - Struggling server maker Sun Microsystems Inc. reached a sweeping, $1.6 billion settlement with Microsoft Corp. and said it plans to cooperate with its longtime nemesis, a company it had branded an unrepentant monopolist.
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The surprise agreement was accompanied by an announcement Friday by Sun that it is cutting 3,300 jobs and that its net loss for the fiscal third quarter will be wider than expected. The cuts represent 9 percent of its total work force of more than 35,000.
The "broad cooperating agreement" with Microsoft ends Sun's $1 billion private antitrust suit against the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant. Sun's complaints also helped spark the investigation that led to the European Union (news - web sites)'s recent record fine against Microsoft.
"It puts peace on the table in a big way," said Scott McNealy, Sun's chief executive, during a conference call Friday.
As part of the deal, Microsoft will pay Sun $700 million to resolve the antitrust case, which was scheduled to go to trial in January 2006, and $900 million to resolve patent issues. Sun and Microsoft also will pay royalties for each others' technologies.
"Our companies will continue to compete hard, but this agreement creates a new basis for cooperation that will benefit the customers of both companies," said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive officer.
Sun's biggest claim -- and the main charge in its antitrust against Microsoft -- involved the Java programming environment Sun created to allow software to run on all computers regardless of the operating system.
Sun said Microsoft violated its license agreement by creating its own version of Java, thus making it less universal. Though a settlement of that case was reached, both sides ended up in court again after Microsoft said it planned to stop supporting Java.
Under Friday's agreement, Microsoft "may continue to provide product support" for its version of the software, called Microsoft Java Virtual Machine.
The deal also creates cooperation between the companies in the technical area of Web-based applications and user identity management between Sun and Microsoft servers. Sun also agreed to sign a license that will allow its software to better communicate with Windows-based desktop computers.
The agreement settles Sun's complaint over Microsoft's server communications that led to the EU's decision against Microsoft last month. That ruling also was based on Microsoft's bundling of its media player with its ubiquitous Windows operating system, though Sun did not play a role in that complaint.
"Sun is also satisfied that the agreements announced today satisfy the objectives it was pursuing in the EU actions pending against Microsoft," Sun said in a statement Friday.
The agreement is an unprecedented change in the relationship between the two companies.
Sun's McNealy often railed against Microsoft, repeatedly calling Microsoft a monopoly and its
But the anti-Microsoft rants quieted in recent months, as Sun struggled to post a profit and the companies worked at resolving the issues between them. On Friday, Sun executives s
Re:Two things stand out (Score:5, Informative)
Now for the more serious matter. You better stop developing applets. They are almost dead. Look at the webstart stuff. That appears to be the direction Sun has been going for a while now. Also, I don't see how you are in any worse of a position now than before this agreement between Sun and Microsoft took place, in regards to Applets. Microsoft was NEVER EVER going to ship a Sun 1.2 or 1.3 or 1.4 or 1.5 compatable JVM. Most developers knew this for a while. The last thing Microsoft wants is for their OS to not be needed.
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Two things stand out (Score:5, Informative)
2. It's a complete application to access databases. You can see it here: http://www.datadino.com [datadino.com]. It requests unrestricted access from you so that it can talk over the network and stash drivers on the hard disk. If you go to Up2Go, you'll find plenty of applications that don't request extra permissions.
3. Do you know of any other technologies that actually *warn* you when launching a potentially unsafe application? Microsoft thought it was A-OK to allow embedded web controls full access to your machine. Now ActiveX controls are responsible for auto-installing web-toolbars and spyware.
Sorry I forgot about the security warning. If it really bothers you, go try an application on Up2Go that's marked 100% safe.
My Take. (Score:4, Informative)
1. 900 Million of the award was to resolve patent issues. That's a pretty huge number (in fact it's the highest patent violation settlement I have ever seen.
2."Sun and Microsoft have agreed to pay royalties for use of each other's technology, with Microsoft making an up-front payment of $350 million and Sun making payments when this technology is incorporated into its server products." So MS and Sun have a cross licensing aggreement and SUN will pay them when the technology is incorporated.
The total award is actually 1.6 Billion. The 350 Million mentioned in the article is the first upfront payment. The cross licensing of patents is the important feature of the settlement. The collaboration is less newsworthy as it was mandated by the settlement with the DOJ.
MSFT should just buy SUNW (Score:4, Informative)
re:Hmmmm (Score:3, Informative)
- In the U.S. "billion" is 10^9. (10^12 is called "trillion".)
- In the U.K. "billion" is 10^12. (10^9 is called "thousand million".)
- I dunno about the rest of the world.
However, even though the Register is apparently a U.K. entity, I don't think anyone believes that M$ is going to pay Sun 2*10^12 dollars. $2*10^9 is already a huge amount of money. $2*10^12 is an ungodly amount of money.Re:Two things stand out (Score:3, Informative)
1. DataDino and Aqua are both "free". Except that Aqua is only "free" for personal use, while DD is "free" for commercial. There's just fewer features activated.
2. Last I checked, Aqua only did SQL queries. DataDino works a little different. It also has the ability to run queries (in the pay version), but it can also browse the data, reverse engineer table source, display relationships, etc. Basically, they're very different products.
BTW, the price list for Aqua is here: http://www.aquafold.com/licensing.html [aquafold.com]
Re:Two things stand out (Score:5, Informative)
The current JVM is around 5MB and installs without much of a problem on Windows.
Actually, it's 15MB [java.com]
Now for the more serious matter. You better stop developing applets. They are almost dead. Look at the webstart stuff.
While WebStart is sweet, Java 1.1 (what Windows ships with) compatible applets are still the only practical way to deliver moderately complex applications via the browser to about 95% of the users. And before you say Flash - it is suitable for pretty graphics and animations, not serious things.
Re:Two things stand out (Score:3, Informative)
Sun doesn't "need" the cash. They have 2Bill in debts, and 6Bill in cash already. They are in a very, very good financial situation. Its part of the reason that they don't care as much about the price of the stock. Sure, 2Bill is a lot of money, but they're doing ok without it.
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2, Informative)
Germany: 10^6=million, 10^9=milliarde,10^12=billion and so forth. A lot of people have trouble with this when translating business news from the US :)
Re:Two things stand out (Score:5, Informative)
and why you make the statement that it sucks is beyond me (actually, its not - this is slashdot after all!). there are very good reasons and applications for JAVA, especially in the enterprise environment where you can leverage a very rich set of specifications (J2EE) to handle complex tasks such as transaction control (2/3-phase commit!) and messaging integration to name but a few. additionally scripting languages such as perl and php generally encourage a blend of application and UI logical, whereas the JSP/Servlet/Bean relationship does lend itself nicely (perhaps not as nicely as
this JAVA sucks blanket statement is generally flaunted because a) its not open source and b) the misconception that JAVA is very slow. 1.1 was pretty darn slow sure, but performance has continued to increase to a point where 1.4 is pretty snappy - even at UI-based work with SWING.
Re:Hmmmm (Score:3, Informative)
In the U.K. "billion" is 10^12. (10^9 is called "thousand million".)
Historically, yes, but the US billion is now widespread. I'm not even convinced that the old UK billion (10^12) is a UK standard anymore:
Britain and Australia traditionally employed the international usage of 10^12, but have recently largely switched to the U.S. version of 10^9.
(from everyone's favourite encyclopaedia: wikipedia [wikipedia.org])
Re:Don't knock your inroads -- 1.1.x ain't bad (Score:5, Informative)
I'd just like to point out that you can still target pre-1.5 JVMs (i.e. 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4) while still developing using the new 1.5 Java language.
You can use my free, open-source, tool, Retroweaver [sf.net] (which has "blessings" from Sun's compiler team), or you can pay money for CodeGuide [omnicore.com].
Re:Two things stand out (Score:2, Informative)
all you chicken littles... (Score:2, Informative)
Sun has plenty of money already. They are not cash-starved, and in fact have been in a very strong position on their balance sheet for a while. It just might be that the reason M$ paid them is because the case was going poorly for them...how's that for an idea?
Sun is also still doing ok, considering the global recession. They're hanging in, still advancing and doing lots of R&D, and once things pick up again in a year or such they'll be ready.
How many of you chicken littles know anything about Solaris10, the new sparcs, chip2chip, or any of the other things that really have little to do with java? Java is NOT Sun's only product. When someone buys a sun server, they're not thinking about java. Sun originally got market share with a rep for cheap prices and awesome customer service. Their service is still great, but they weren't able to keep processor prices down in comparison with buying them from intel. However, they still have the most solid systems, as far as I'm concerned (they're very expensive now, but less so than the same quality elsewhere). And you can get a 4-way server from Sun cheaper than you can from even Dell...and Dell's rep is crap (would you *expect* a dell box to be running without a reboot after 5 years?). They are picking up some of the ideas that got them big in the beginning, and effectively implimenting them.
Just because Sun got 2B from M$, doesn't mean they're dead...yeeesh...it means they got 2B from M$.
Merrill says it is not enough - "bloated,..." (Score:2, Informative)
Here is a Bloomberg news link [bloomberg.com]
"In October, Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst Steven Milunovich suggested Sun put Schwartz in a position to talk to the public more and called him ``brilliant.''
McNealy has resisted slashing more jobs. Merrill's Milunovich had called the company a ``bloated, underachieving, unfocused'' business and said it needs to eliminate 7,000 workers.
Sun has had their market share eroded on both sides - Microsoft and Open source *nixes. Even a $1.6 Billion US is not going to be enough to prop them up. And who knows if SCO has their eyes on that money!
Re:Two things stand out (Score:3, Informative)
Not to mention your casual assertion that applets are actually useful and cannot be easily replaced by other technologies.
The grandparent to your post was correct.
Re:Sun as the next SCO? (Score:4, Informative)
Depends on what your using your desktop for. Solaris at the desktop tends to be a preference a user makes. If your developing for a Solaris environment you may want to use your local workstation as a sandbox for local development/testing. While this isn't a requirement (all depends on what your developing), it does add a level of confidence.
As for Sun pushing Java Desktop System (JDS), they are really pushing 3 solutions:
Solaris SPARC
Solaris x86
Java Desktop System
Ultimately they are trying to push applications that are binary compatible across all three solutions. This will allow the user to decide which platform meets their needs. I believe we'll see more of the JDS systems than the others at the desktop level, but that's just an opinion.
BTW - If you have a chance to sit at one of the Sun Blade systems, don't pass it up. The system works well for geospatial applications (generally CPU/graphically intense applications).
Re:Two things stand out (Score:3, Informative)
You're looking at the full SDK
Why not check before saying? It's easy - just click the link in my post.
The SDK [sun.com] is around 40MB and the website references in my first post, java.com [java.com], is the end-user Java website - it doesn't even link to the SDK. The developers' website is java.sun.com [sun.com].
Re:Two things stand out (Score:4, Informative)
An attempt to clarify the settlement (Score:2, Informative)
If you want to see the settlement clearly, think of Bill Gates bending over with his pants down.
Sun got just about everything it wanted, including $1.6 Billion in what amount to fines plus another $350 million in advance royalties on IP to be used by MS. That's $1,950 million - real money even for MS and just about one third of Sun's cash and short term securities before these payments are counted.
The cash, however, is less important than three pieces in the agreement: one giving Sun the right to license and access MS protocols at preset prices, one committing MS to inter-operability on identification and authentication, and the other preventing mutual lawsuits for ten years.
The importance of the licensing issue is in the access to information side of it. What this means is that open source products like SAMBA can continue to succeed regardless of MS's wishes in the matter.
The importance of the inter-operability issue lies in the fact that Sun is the driving force behind a range of open identity technologies - including the use of the SAML as a message carrier instead of an RPC vehicle. MS, of course, wants to do its own, very controlled and proprietary, thing with identity and authentication and this agreement will let them do it, but force them to maintain compatibility with the open standard right alongside their proprietary one -leaving the choice to customers and developers; all of whom can see exploding growth opportunities on the open side and little beyond the RIAA on the MS side.
The third key piece, the no mutual lawsuits clause, probably won't stand long but represents an initial layer of legal protection against use of the courts to legitimize cheating by either side - and, of course, we need to interpret this in terms of a history in whuch MS has just agreed to pay Sun 1.6 Billion to compensate for past cheating.