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Microsoft Patents Sun Microsystems

Sun and Microsoft Make Nice 152

Posted by CmdrTaco from the more-expensive-then-a-kiss-and-make-up dept.
DrLudicrous writes "Sun Microsystems and Microsoft have reached some kind of settlement (NYTimes, registration required) with regards to patent issues and Sun's antitrust suit against Microsoft. Microsoft is apparently going to pay Sun about 1.6 billion US dollars, join into a ten-year pact of cooperation, and resolve a set of patent disputes. This has been in the works for about a year, starting as a series of phone calls between Scott McNealy and Steve Ballmer. You can also catch the story here." update oh well, it's a duplicate. Nothing else interesting happening today :)
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Sun and Microsoft Make Nice More

Sun and Microsoft Make Nice

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  • Damn deja vu. Where's that cat ? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) * on Saturday April 03, 2004 @11:59AM (#8755860) Journal
    ... because I could have sworn [slashdot.org] that 'Sun and Microsoft Settled Litigation' yesterday...

    Looks like it loses 400 million dollars a day though, so pretty soon Sun'll be paying a huge wad of cash over to Bill...

    Simon
  • And i think we already went over how it gives Microsoft a "foot in the door" for interoperability with Unix via java and .NET.

    First they ignored, then laughed and are now assimilating.

  • What effect will this have on Java? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by James A. M. Joyce ( 764379 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @12:01PM (#8755876) Journal
    I hope Microsoft doesn't apply any pressure on Sun to get rid of Java or screw it up. They're probably acutely aware that this money will make it easier for them to destroy the highly portable and competitive language. It's a veritable C# killer!
    • or perhaps its a J# killer?
    • No effect at all. If anything it will actually help Java out.

      Don't see how conspiry theory's are marked interesting.

      Java is to big to be killed, and it's the source for a lot of money for Sun. This will actually help both C# and Java because you can write in either language and compile into either Java Byte Code or MSIL (Microsoft's Byte Code). This will also help the Mono project out and make Eric Raymond's group's job a lot easier.

      Java will also get more support on Windows.

    • Re:What effect will this have on Java? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Is java a money maker for Sun? No question that it's a money maker for a lot of little guys but I couldn't tell you if Sun is getting anything out of it other than name recognition.

      Now java is a big beast, but Sun never let it go. IBM has fully invested in Java and Sun could burn the java house down just to screw IBM. I don't know that you could kill java but you could severely damage it and give it that "bridge to nowhere" look. That's what MS did with OS/2, they simply out spent IBM and made it lo

    • Just being curious, but couldn't Sun's refusal to open source Java be a part of this Sun-MS agreement?

      Getting rid of an open sourced Java opponent is i.m.h.o. more valuable to MS than the 1.6 G$ settlement fee.

      Just my 0.02 $....

  • Sun + MS + SCO == Friends forever and ever. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 03, 2004 @12:03PM (#8755885)

    You can live in denial, or you can just accept that MS and Sun is going to turn on linux and Free Software in general.

    Brought together by a common enemy.

    Sure, MS will dispose of Sun sooner or later, but after they've done how much damage?

  • Microsoft needs to keep Sun alive (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mr_majestyk ( 671595 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @12:04PM (#8755888)
    It's in Microsoft's interest for Sun to survive because it weakens the monopoly case against it (the same way Intel keeps AMD alive). The more healthy Sun is, the more MS can point to them as a viable competitor in the server market. Indeed, this is a little reminiscient of Microsoft's investment in Apple a few years ago, which preserved that company as a nominal competitor in the desktop market. This might be called "managed competition".
    • I'd rather think they would use it in their 'war on linux'. How will Sun's attitude towards linux evolve during the folowing months? Will they continue to sell linux? Maybe 1.6 billion dollar is enough money to make them drop it..
      • Sun hasn't ever really done much selling of Linux. They've thumbed their nose at Linux almost since the beginning. They've near-deliberately crippled it by witholding full native Java support. Even in the time period when it would have been very damaging to Microsoft for there to be full and robust Java support on Linux, Sun held back.
    • That's funny you should say Intel is keeping AMD alive. Who has the faster processors? Who's now copying who's instruction set? Who's later on the 64 bit architecture?

      Someone better start holding AMD under a little harder, before they lose the whole market.

    • Re:Microsoft needs to keep Sun alive (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Xenographic ( 557057 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @01:38PM (#8756424) Journal
      True.

      I fear that Microsoft is just trying to keep some token competitors around for the sole purpose of avoiding antitrust claims, while at the same time making sure that their "competitors" cannot actually threaten their entrenched monopoly position.

      E.G. they get to rake in all the cash benefits of being a monopoly, while still being able to point to "competitors" which cannot actually threaten their monopoly position any longer and which simply protect them from antitrust complaints...

      All the while, while faced with anemic "competitors," they could then claim that they do have competition but that they remain in their position because their products are "better."

      In spite of deals like the one with AOL/Time Warner to use IE instead of Netscape/Mozilla, when IE is a total piece of crap (it has the worst security record of any web browser, period). Hell, I still remember being scandalized the first few times I heard about holes in IE that could lead to total compromise of a system. The worst I remember for any other browser offhand is the possibility of leaking cookies or weaknesses in their cryptography and such, none of which are even remotely comparable...

      Oh well. There's not a damned thing I can do about any of this monopoly business, but ever since I started teaching basic internet courses to the community here, I've been able to at least tell them where and how to get Mozilla [mozilla.org], and why they should never, ever use the piece of crap that is IE :]
    • Microsoft did NOT save Apple as a competitor. Steve Jobs saved Apple. Apple still had a few billion dollars in a cash pile at the time.
    • "Microsoft needs to keep Sun alive, kill him, Steve needs to keep Scott alive, twist his head off, mustn't kill Scott, kill him kill him, no no Steve must be nice..." Steve Ballmer was heard to say throughout the press conference. [channelnewsasia.com]
    • Intel cannot kill AMD without being anti-competitive. I'm sure they watch MS and learn from the lesson. They do have the resource to squeez AMD out,but it'll prob take quite a bit of Intel's effort to do so as well.

      Apple was practically dying before MS step in with their investment. This is different from AMD's case.
  • A joint operation between mirosoft and sun? Sun is the backbone of internet operations. I suppose this means the end of quality products, design, and innovation from sun. I have a feeling they only did this for the money, as they have been falling on hard times lately.
    • This means more that that. It means the backbone of internet operations will legally be able to communicate with the edge of the internet (people's home PC's) because the royalty is paid up.

      Linux clients won't be able to talk to the Sun backbone and Linux servers won't be able to talk to the Windows clients.

      Microsoft and Sun decided to carve up the pie among the two of them, leaving IBM/Linux out.

  • This story and the Simpsons one are old news. I guess the Slashdot editors were too busy with their April Fools shenanigans to post anything that really happened in the past few days.
  • Microsoft pays EU big bag of cash.
    Microsoft pays SUN big bag of cash.
    What's next?

  • They made me think of a bit of Shakespeare (Score:3, Insightful)

    by alumshubby ( 5517 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @12:07PM (#8755906)
    "...Like two spent swimmers that do cling together/And thus choke their art..."

    Not that Microsoft is in danger of going down the tubes anytime soon, but this has been a real pain in the neck for them and they're better off not having to combat the .Net/Java thing. Let Java be Java, and let .Net be, uh, well, let it be.

    It's sad to see what kind of shape Sun is in lately, but maybe they'll be able to focus on being a business instead of a party to a cancerous lawsuit.

  • New "Patent Regime" is a threat to open source (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Captain Kirk ( 148843 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @12:10PM (#8755922) Homepage Journal
    I watched the video of Ballmer and McNealy boasting about their new patent regime.

    I wonder what open source project will suffer first as they enforce these patents? Mono? JBoss?
    • The reason Micrsoft patents everything is to protect them from frivalous lawsuits (e.g. Eolas). Microsoft only pulled it's muscle on a few patent cases (e.g. Lindows).

      Microsoft has patents on stuff that Open Source uses, has patents on stuff Sun is using, etc. And the other way around.

      The cost of lawsuits is too expensive, esp for little details like an icon or what not. But companies (Eolas for having a page get information from another server?!) are created just to create items that Microsoft has not

    • I wonder what open source project will suffer first as they enforce these patents? .

      I would be really surprised if this isn't Microsoft's new way to take on open source projects that threaten their business. Sure, Mono, but also Linux in general. Their sponsorship of SCO was just the beginning.

      MS has found that sometimes, they cannot win from open source projects on their products' merits alone. FUD isn't working as well as it used to either. And their monopoly position and the use they make of it

      • That's not even true. Sun is the real loser in the marketplace. Sun servers are being replaced not with just Linux servers, but with Microsoft servers as well. I learned this on a recent interview for a company that does a lot of business with banks, mutual funds, etc. They're replacing Sun with Microsoft at customers' requests.
    • Sun was getting pecked apart by Penguins. Microsoft so far has not lost any of it's core business to the rising tide of Penguinistas. But Microsoft sees the threat. Microsoft fears Open Source.

      Microsoft would rather have the battle on Sun's turf- even if that means keeping Sun alive! I think the two will fight open source with patents.

      Sun and Microsoft could have partitioned the 1.6 Billion in any way they saw fit. They put the bulk of into into Licensing patents. Not so much for damages from viol

  • According to Maureen O'Gara (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jg21 ( 677801 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @12:19PM (#8755975)
    writing at JDJ's online site [sys-con.com], McNealy said he was pressured to try glasnost by his customers, who have mixed environments and wanted the companies to "stop the noise" and "get it together." Ballmer said there was "nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing" in the agreement, which was barely sketched, that "would not delight" both sets of customers.

  • Interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by unts ( 754160 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @12:19PM (#8755979) Journal
    From The Register [theregister.co.uk], a quote from Steve Ballmer:

    This agreement recognizes that cutting edge R&D and intellectual property protection are the foundation for the growth and success of our industry.

    This can be read: "MS loves SCO's thinking."

  • Why? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @12:21PM (#8755989) Journal
    Microsoft had nothing to fear from Sun or their litigation. Sun is a company that is slowly dying, largely due to McNealey's failure to forecast the changing OS climate over that past 10 years (and partially due only his ignorance of Linux and his stout refusal to utilize - especially in saving his low and medium end business). Sun had every oppurtunity between 1998 and 2001 to do exactly what IBM and Novell did, but McNealey's ignorance damned them.

    Microsoft could have just waited Sun out.

    • Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jg21 ( 677801 )
      Ever heard of the Java Desktop System...enough Linux for you there? Mcnealy is late to the party, but at least he's now there - largely thanks to new his newly-anointed COO, J Schwartz

    • Microsoft had nothing to fear from Sun or their litigation.

      wanna bet??? Sun had saved stuff from the shredder [sltrib.com] and had the real dirt on them... what's the bet's this settlement also involves Sun quitely destroying the real evidence that Microsoft would definitely not want seen dragged into open court...

      I just wonder if IBM will be putting in a court order to rescue them from Sun's shredder...

  • Heh (Score:5, Funny)

    by Omega1045 ( 584264 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @12:22PM (#8755995)
    The next Slashdot duplicate story will be ready soon, but subscribers [slashdot.org] can beat the rush and see it early [slashdot.org]!
  • Nothing else interesting is happening today, so a story gets duped? Cool! Now I know that I have a 0.0000001% chance of getting a story posted to SlashDot, if only I could post on a day in which nothing interesting is happened.
  • What is going on at /. these days?
    It seems to me that about 25% of the front page articles are either reposts or just plain wrong.
    Have there been some changes to the editorial staff?
  • ...even I would make nice with Microsoft.

  • heh (Score:2, Funny)

    by segfault7375 ( 135849 )

    update: oh well, it's a duplicate.

    The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.

    CmdrTaco: Hello, My name is CmdrTaco, and I am a duplicate addict.
    All: Hi CmdrTaco!

    :-)
  • Why not head over to the register and read another of their editorials: Why Sun threw in the towel in Mankind vs. Microsoft [theregister.co.uk]

    It's worth a gander.

  • OOo (Score:2, Funny)

    by jaavaaguru ( 261551 )
    Microsoft pays Sun a large amount of money. So really, a lot of the hard work that went into the free Office suite I use is being paid for by the sheep who bought Microsoft Office. Nice :-)

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @01:03PM (#8756235)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • They can do what they like, patent-wise, but they can't kill Linux. The genie is out of the bottle. The Chinese, the Indians, the Russians, and the rest of the world (with the possible exception of the EU) will never bend over for any wacky patent or copyright claims from McNealy and Gates.

      I can see the Chinese giggling right now. They've been copying MS disks for years and distributing them for free, despite government lip service RE shutting the counterfeiters down. Now the West is going to step on i
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • dude, all it takes is common sense... even in this country (Brazil), which has a long history of sucking uncle Sam's dick, some minister had the balls to declare that ridiculous drug patents void, and then a bunch of labs started making "generic" drugs, which cost a fraction of the price... Lives get saved this way, so, it can't be bad. I wonder why that kind of patents are allowed/respected anywhere... It is like putting corporate interests of some rich fat fucks in the other side of the globe above the li
  • cuz it went up 25% in a flash.

    Then again, everytime I've bought the stock, I've watched it halve in value.

    Seriously, though, if I could use ms-office docs on a Sun, then I might go back to having a Sun on my desk. (No, staroffice isn't there yet. Close enough for hand grenades, but not for effective collaboration with ms-office users.)

  • Scary (Score:3, Interesting)

    by IGnatius T Foobar ( 4328 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @01:06PM (#8756253) Homepage Journal
    This is kind of scary. We all know that Sun's relationship with Linux is somewhat schizophrenic. Over the last month or two they've been fairly reasonable (Opteron-based servers and decent Linux support) but we all know that McNealy the Big Mouth Bass still thinks that Solaris is the way to go. He still thinks Sun can "win" in the marketplace with SPARC and Solaris, beating out commodity stuff in even the small installations where SPARC and Solaris don't have an advantage.

    If McNealy thinks that getting in bed with Microsoft is going to give Sun a leg up over Linux, then there are going to be some very annoying times ahead.

  • SMC can only blame itself (Score:5, Insightful)

    by n3bulous ( 72591 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @01:08PM (#8756261)
    But for Sun, which had rose through the ranks of a dozens similar workstation manufacturers through foresight, engineering skill and hard competition, Microsoft's mediocrity is an affront.

    While Sun has had decent hardware, it wasn't better than SGI or HP. They were stagnant on the user side of innovation. There is no reason why Sun couldn't have developed a KDE or Gnome type UI (although I was mostly happy with Openlook...) They had years of warning in advance of MS who didn't really have a network interface until 1995ish and they failed to exploit it.

    On the server side, they may have been the last *nix company to start bundling commonly installed GNU/OSS software in their distro like perl and bash.

    In the 90s, McNeally is on record as saying if he had been Bill Gates, he'd have done the same stuff, referring to the business practices of MS.

    The workstation manufacturers like SGI and Sun blew their chances because they used expensive, custom hardware and charged by the pound and were very slow to innovate from a user perspective. They targetted science, research, and graphics shops that could afford their hardware, because at the time it was the best performing. As soon as Intel and AMD caught up in hardware, and Linux and MS with the OS, their advantage disappeared quickly.

    Sun will be remembered no differently than Netscape or Real, who blew their chances by stagnating. Don't get me wrong, MS's business practices are shameful, if not illegal, but the real problem is that MS was allowed the opportunity to catch up.
  • Don't make this complicated -- Microsoft sees this in a very easy way. The enemy (Sun) of my enemy (Linux) is my friend. Microsoft and Sun are both waging a battle against Linux. This helps both of them in that war.

  • three envelopes (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rifftide ( 679288 )
    Lou Gerstner was playing a round of golf with Steve Jobs and Scott McNealy. Gerstner, as it turns out, was a weak golfer, but the other two CEOs acknowledged being impressed with how he was turning around IBM. "What's your secret with dealing with Gates?" They kept badgering him, so later Gerstner had one of his secretaries mail each of them a package with three envelopes.

    The first envelope was marked: "Open after a weak quarter". Inside was a slip of paper that said, "Bash Microsoft at every opportun

  • Auto Karma maker.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by tonywestonuk ( 261622 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @01:13PM (#8756294)
    DECLARE CURSOR C1 FOR
    SELECT commentTitle, commentText FROM comments WHERE Storytitle="Sun and Microsoft Settle Litigation" AND moderation = +5

    OPEN C1
    FETCH NEXT from C1 into :Title, :Text

    While (SQLCOD==0){
    postNewComment(Title,Text);

    FETCH NEXT from C1 into :Title, :Text
    }

    CLOSE C1

  • Try to think positive, sigh. (Score:3, Informative)

    by bstarrfield ( 761726 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @01:18PM (#8756328)
    Oh, well. MS wins again. First Apple, the DOJ, now Sun. The EU case doesn't have any real effect on MS from a business perspective.
    On the positive side, at least an infusion of cash will keep Sun from falling into the same sad state as SGI. Look, Apple dealt with the devil and went on to produce some great stuff. We can hope the same occurs with Sun.
    On the whole Java vs. C#, I honestly wish Sun would have made some of the same semantic improvements that MS came up with.

  • I guess were in for an eclipse.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by josepha48 ( 13953 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @02:05PM (#8756618) Journal
    of the sun...

    Any company that has partnered with MS seems to have been either bought by, or hindered by things like this. EG: Netscape -> gone for all intents and purpses, and while mozilla lives on, the market share is small. Real.com -> While they are still around, who uses real over windows media player or quicktime? Corel -> yeah they are still around, but didn't MS dump its stock in them? Mac -> MS owns part of Mac, or at least last time I checked they did.

    My guess is that Sun and MS would play real nice in Windows services for UNIX, of course I just use cygwin and don't pay for more MS licenses.

    Just my 2 cents.... I know Sun is in trouble and they are probably doing this as a last resort, to save money.

  • In the corporate/business world even when companies are partnering up, they are still always under consideration to be a competitor.

    They are going up fight in the sales trenches just as they were before. Only difference would be the CEOs talking less trash.
  • Cats and dogs living together, the lamb and the lion sleeping together... mass hysteria.

    What is the world coming to. Next thing you know, someone will tell me Microsoft is selling Linux ;-)

  • What does this mean for Sun Java Desktop Linux?

    What about Sun StarOffice, or even OpenOffice for that matter? I know it's officially OSS, but OpenOffice1.1 now has the Sun logo on the startup banner, so it's there for a reason, right?

    Something about this gives me the jumblies.
  • I can understand (somewhat) when obscure stories get duplicated; but this, folks, is about SUN kissing Micro$oft. Sun, Microsoft and Linux are probably the 3 most well-known names on Slashdot. How is it possible that the editor(s) didn't know that this story was a dupe? It just boggles the mind.

  • maybe MS will update IE for *nix platforms now.. big babies...
  • Some articles Like this one [canada.com] Talk about how Sun is also cutting 3 300 jobs. Sucky.
  • Does anyone actually believe that Sun will still be here in 10 years. As I said before [slashdot.org], I doubt it very much.
  • Sun is not selling a version of it's "Java software" to compete with Microsoft Windows, it is selling Suse Linux to compete with Microsoft. Sun sells both RedHat and Suse and has invested a LOT of money in the past two years in embracing and adding to Linux. JDS, which has sold millions of copies, is Suse Linux, bundled with StarOffice, Mozilla, Evolution, and a little gui that lets you globally set your JDK home. Sun is one of the top distributers of Linux now, if not THE top distributer after the Irela

  • Sun and Microsoft: what it means for open source (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LibrePensador ( 668335 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @04:21PM (#8757409) Journal
    We already know that Sun and Microsoft are scared out of their wits by Linux, so the settlement between is not a surprise, particularly if we
    consider that both Sun and Microsoft are SCO supporters, I mean, licensees.

    The real news is that SUN is bleeding money incessantly. If you read their published quarterly results and know a bit about accounting, you will realize that rather than use the settlement money as a one-time payment to offset current losses, they plan to spread it out over a number of quarters to pad future potential loses. This shows that Sun has very little faith in its own future.

    From a cnet.com article on the same subject:

    "For its fiscal third quarter, which ended Sunday, Sun expects revenue of $2.65 billion and a net loss of $710 million to $810 million, or 23
    cents to 25 cents per share. The loss includes charges of about $350 million for an increase in the valuation allowance for deferred tax assets and about $200 million to restructure its work force and real estate, Sun said.

    Excluding the charges, the loss would have been $200 million to $260 million, or 6 to 8 cents per share. The average estimate of analysts surveyed by Thompson First Call was less pessimistic: a loss of 3 cents per share on revenue of $2.85 billion.

    The company says it has more than 35,000 employees worldwide, so the layoffs account for about 9 percent of its work force. The job cuts will affect all divisions and geographic areas, McGowan said. The majority of cuts will take place by the end of September, he added. Sun already had cut 8,500 employees in two major layoffs in 2001 and 2002."

    I give Sun about 5 more years before it's bought out. Only saving grace would be if everyone got fiberoptic lines to their homes in the next few
    years and they could rent you app space in their sun-rays servers for a few dollars a month. Somehow I don't see that happening...

    And Java won't save them unless they turn it into the defacto language for desktop apps, which just isn't likely to happen. .NEt seems to be winning the battle for mind-share already. Real shame as I happen to like Java and believe that it could really make a huge difference to our computing if it was in a better steward's hands, those of the open source community.

    For further reference on the Sun-SCO relationship, read this piece by David Berlind.

    http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/m ai n/Could_Sun_hold_...

    For SUN's initial SCO FUD, read this among many of the articles that they put out:

    http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/0,20000617 33 ,20276755,00.htm

    It is obvious to anyone that cares to look that Sun is between a rock and a hard place.

    The reason they called the Java Desktop System (JDS) by that name is so that they can switch from Linux to Solaris and continue to call it by
    the same name, which is what they intend to do.

    People really need to understand that Sun ain't no friend of ours. They opensource StarOffice to spite Microsoft and the community around Openoffice has built something that would have taken Sun years with more than 40 supported languages, more than Office, and another 35 in the works. SUN began to offer Linux servers because customers demanded it, simply because they did not want to be tied into a proprietary OS with proprietary hardware.

    If SUN's management had some brains, they would focus on hardware, placed their bets on Linux and put Solaris in maintenance mode for those
    that really want to run it. I still believe that Solaris is a very good OS for some very limited scenarios, but how will it compare to Linux
    one, two, three, four and five years down the road?

    On the long haul, Sun will be wasting a ton of resources that they could be using to build services higher-up-the-Linux stack. They could also improve their hardware and face the other real challenge that they are going to have a hard time facing: Inte
  • Hope the url is OK. New japanese electric motor, super efficient. A LOT of implications here. I submitted it right before 4-1, my bad.

    http://www.japan.com/technology/index.php

    TECHNOLOGY
    The Techno Maestro's Amazing Machine
    Kohei Minato and the Japan Magnetic Fan Company

    A maverick inventor's breakthrough electric motor uses permanent magnets to make power -- and has investors salivating

    More at the site, it's quite interesting. Note: permanent magnet motors aren't new, his has a different twist to the
  • Perhaps whole .NET will be discarded into the thrashcan and we will be left with a few great programming languages C,C++ and Java do do some real work instead of creating wrapppers and infrastrusture for the junk produced by the confused corporate managers and their programmers.
  • ITYM "more-expensive-THAN-...", not "more-expensive-THEN-...".
  • They are a company who's whole existance is to make money. So is Microsoft.

    If sun can make expensive and highly specialized Windows servers that no other maker can make, no longer be an enemy of MS, and kill java they could win.

    Remember Microsoft made WindowsNT portable on purpose in an order to kill Unix and attract the vendoers. The first version of WindowsNT was made on an SGI workstation for the mips processor.

    Sun has the most fault tollerant systems besides IBM mainframes. They could keep their nitc
  • to the list of entities that don't learn from others mistakes and strike a deal with Microsoft. Time to get out the burn cream and the finger-tip band aids.
  • Scott McNealy's company is in ig trouble, and this announcement was a diversion. Notice thaat at the same time he announced this deal, which received front page press, he was laying off 3300 people and announcing a 700-800 million dollar loss.

    Sun was arrogant and just refused to see that the commodity hardware was going to catch them and destroy their server business. The 64 bit x86 chips spell the end of SPARC. McNealy never built a services business or a software business that wasn't tied to his platf

  • Errrr....that's not Java it's Linux.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wukie ( 684014 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @09:45PM (#8759146)
    Sun also has been pushing a version of its Java software as an alternative to the Windows operating system for personal computers.

    I'm certain the author in the Washington Post article is refering to "Java Desktop System" which is the name of a Linux distribution.

    The earlier comment the author makes:
    Linux-based systems, marketed by IBM and others, have made strong inroads in the corporate-systems market. So far, Sun has been the primary victim, but Linux has provided more competition for Microsoft than has any software in years.

    Leads me to believe that he doesn't realize Sun are also involved in Linux as an OS (not just providing applications such as the StarOffice suite).
  • i've been looking around for awhile now for a replacement for java servlets and velocity templates. i think i may have found it:

    python [python.org] replaces java
    webware [sourceforge.net] replaces servlets
    cheetah [cheetahtemplate.org] replaces velocity

    i've just started using python, haven't even cracked open webware or cheetah yet - but conceptually, at least, these seem quite similar to their counterparts.

    i suspect the java-based stuff is faster, scales a lot better, has more libraries, and is more mature - but the P+W+C might grow to fill that void,

  • Well, here's my prediction: If America's legal system is too corrupt and dysfunctional to hold Bill Gates accountable (and most citizens, including even many open source fans, don't even give a damn), then the international community will do the job for us. I believe the European Union's recent fine marked the beginning of a high-tech Cold War. Japan's government cited the EU's action in relation to its raid on a Microsoft outpost. Of course, many nations are pursuing Linux as an alternative to Microsoft.

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