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Sun Microsystems Microsoft

Gosling: Partnership with Microsoft Meaning Less and Less 145

Posted by CowboyNeal from the breaking-up-is-hard-to-do dept.
Jeebus writes "At an event in Sydney this week James Gosling questioned the technical relationship between Sun Microsystems and Microsoft in light of the antitrust demands of the European Union. Gosling also talks about reverse engineering, DMCA and collaboration with Microsoft with on identity management. "
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Gosling: Partnership with Microsoft Meaning Less and Less More

Gosling: Partnership with Microsoft Meaning Less and Less

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  • This is easy... (Score:4, Funny)

    by AntiPasto ( 168263 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @08:55PM (#11568443) Journal
    ... Microsoft has to let the Sun shine, or else they'd kill all their customers!

  • Best quote (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bartash ( 93498 )
    Gosling described the DMCA, which was passed in the United States a few years ago, as "really vile."
    • He must be a terar'ist!!! If you don't like America- LEAVE!
  • and it will continue to do so until Sun realizes this, then sues Microsoft again on the basis that they didn't get quite what they expected from the lawsuit

    that sounds familiar
  • The $1.9B was a one-time payment.
    • What many people don't realize is that it was paid in Flooz.com stock!

    • Re:Duh (Score:1)

      by htd2 ( 854946 )
      The $1.9B was a one-time payment.

      Actually it wasn't there is also a patent exchange agreement which would allow MS to pay royalties to Sun if there is a significant inbalance between the two companies patent portfolio (which there is at the moment).

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

    by rackhamh ( 217889 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @09:03PM (#11568493)
    Will Sun serve as an example for other companies to not pursue Microsoft, and wait for governments to do the dirty work instead?

    • Re:I wonder... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Sun pursued Microsoft for years, and finally got a cool 2 billion for it. 2 billion is, what, 4% of Microsoft's cash? A 4% hit is actually pretty big, considering the size of these companies.
    • Sun was one of the big complainants to the EC, actualy, so they were both pursuing MS and asking governments (aka the cops) to chase them too.

      --dave

  • I'm confused (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PDXNerd ( 654900 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @09:04PM (#11568504)
    Since when did a business partnership with Microsoft ever "mean" anything anyway (except decreased revenues)?
    • c'mon, aren't you ALL signed up as MicroSoft 'Partners' too?

      • Re:I'm confused (Score:4, Interesting)

        by cduffy ( 652 ) <charles+slashdot@dyfis.net> on Thursday February 03, 2005 @09:48PM (#11568785)
        Yup, our VP of Engineering signed us up, much to IT's dismay -- as part of the contract we agreed to do a bunch of stuff we never had any intention of (like building a MS-certified product, though we're a Java shop) and agreed to let the BSA audit us at will... and in return we got a bunch of licenses (time-limited unless we renew), most of which have enough strings on them to be useful for nothing except building products that interoperate with the MS products in question. Bah!

        PS - This post is a work of fiction. It's quite certainly not intended to reflect the politics, actions, etc. of any employer of mine, past or present, and any such similarity is mere coincidence.
    • Oh come on...don't they sometimes partner with them before buying them out and swallowing all their best products?

    • Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Informative)

      by FuzzyBad-Mofo ( 184327 ) <fuzzybad@gmaCURIEil.com minus physicist> on Thursday February 03, 2005 @10:50PM (#11569124)

      Maybe after the FBI's Virtual Case File [cnn.com] disaster, Microsoft Certified Partners [saic.com] will realize that you don't build a mission-critical application from the computer equivilant of Lincoln Logs.

      • Ahh, more unfounded MS-bashing.

        From the articles cited, it certianly sounds like shoddy management and planning caused this project failure, not a particular piece of software. Certainly it would have been reported widely if bugs in the .NET environment made the project flop?

        SAIC, like all huge consultancies, deals with just about every technology and platform. SAIC also does huge Java projects [softwarerevolution.com]. By your logic, why should we not assume that Java at fault for the VCF failure?

        Anyway, something as big as VCF

      • I think you misunderstand the SAIC business model.

        As someone who had dealt with picking up the pieces after a major fubar by these clowns, I can tell you that it has nothing to do with economic reality or delivering a working product. All it has to do with an old boys school called Ma Bell.

        If you want to have your systems compliant to the whatever regulations were left for interop after the breakup of Ma Bell you have to have the certified by Telcordia (they have a monopoly on this). If you want them cert

  • EULA, DMCA and Reverse Engineering. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sanityspeech ( 823537 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @09:05PM (#11568507) Journal
    From the article:
    "In the past, what we'd have to do is reverse-engineering, and we had been getting into a pickle, because for open-source projects like Samba and OpenOffice, the only way to get the information was by reverse-engineering," he said."Pretty much for ALL the countries in the world, reverse-engineering was a perfectly fine thing to do."
    Seeing that EULAs [wikipedia.org] existed long before the DMCA [wikipedia.org] came into effect, how on earth was it possible to develop a wonderful tool like SAMBA [samba.org] without some reverse engineering? My guess is some EULA(s) must have been violated. Surely, Microsoft could not have supported that.

    IANAL, so enlightenment on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

    • Re:EULA, DMCA and Reverse Engineering. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cduffy ( 652 ) <charles+slashdot@dyfis.net> on Thursday February 03, 2005 @09:12PM (#11568567)
      Let's say that I'm a UNIX guy. I don't own a copy of Microsoft Windows. I never agreed to their EULA.

      I observe and reverse-engineer an over-the-wire file transfer protocol between two computers owned by my friends.

      Now, tell me: How is any EULA violated? I never agreed to it in the first place, so I can't be violating it.

      • Now, tell me: How is any EULA violated? I never agreed to it in the first place, so I can't be violating it.

        Not you - your friends violated the EULA by allowing you to use their computers to reverse engineer the protocol. I have never actually read an EULA in its entirety (who has?), but there must be something in there that prohibits that :-)

        • Re:EULA, DMCA and Reverse Engineering. (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          No because I never touch there computer, there computer access my network where I capture the packets and reverse engineer it.

          They only tell me if it works or not... they try and connect to my implementation and they tell me if it works or not.

          I never sign the agreement so I am clean, and they never reverse engineer.
        • The friends didn't allow him to use their computers. They just all happened to be on the same network. Unix guy observed the wire while Windows guys used their own respective computers to share data. Is there a EULA violation there?

          • The friends didn't allow him to use their computers. They just all happened to be on the same network. Unix guy observed the wire while Windows guys used their own respective computers to share data. Is there a EULA violation there?

            I have no idea. But who knows what could happen in a court ? It could be argued that such reverse engineering can not happen without at least some level of cooperation with the Windows-using friends (the Unix guy must find out in some way what SMB operations they are trying to

            • OK, what if the 3 guys are in the same room, on the same hub, and unix guy is just looking over at the monitors and watching what's going on, or just listening to the roomates when they say "OK, I just put the file in the share folder, go ahead and download it now, it's ready!" and the other guy says "OK, I'm downloading it right now!"
          • In the U.S you can't breathe the same air as Steve Ballmer and friends approves it.

            The irony is that so many other countries are fully using pirated versions of windows, and they don't give a fuck about M$ EULA. I want to say Asia has got to be the worst.

      • I observe and reverse-engineer an over-the-wire file transfer protocol between two computers owned by my friends. Now, tell me: How is any EULA violated? I never agreed to it in the first place, so I can't be violating it.

        Probably for the exact same reason you can't legally use a DirecTV decoder; even though you may have never agreed to their terms of service, and even though their signal is being broadcast onto your property.

        No, the fact that you'll get yourself in a heapload of trouble by observing som
        • Probably for the exact same reason you can't legally use a DirecTV decoder; even though you may have never agreed to their terms of service, and even though their signal is being broadcast onto your property.

          Seems a non-sequitur to me: DirecTV's broadcasts include anti-circumvention technology, so the DMCA applies to attempts to reverse-engineer them. The same isn't true of SMB/CIFS.
        • ... the fact that you'll get yourself in a heapload of trouble by observing something that was presented to you ...

          Yeah I know what you mean. She was the one standing naked with the curtains open, I don't know what all the fuss was about.

        • No, the fact that you'll get yourself in a heapload of trouble by observing something that was presented to you may not seem to be "common sense", but those are the breaks of living in this society. If you don't like it, don't post about it on Slashdot; go buy some Senators and Congressmen.

          Good to see someone else has a handle on American politics. The problem is that we don't have the money to buy congressmen and senators. The system is certainly rigged in favour of big business.

          This is why I get so of


          • US claiming that they will bring their flavour of 'democracy' to Iraq

            Most people weren't supposed to notice that the CPA was doing massive privatisation of Iraqi government owned businesses. And loosen up restrictions on foreign ownership, etc.

            "Democracy" is interesting, though. What would happen if the electorate votes in representatives who decide to nationalize oil production, for example? Will the U.S. uphold democracy in that case?

            It is more likely that the IMF and World Bank will tell any would-

        • Probably for the exact same reason you can't legally use a DirecTV decoder; even though you may have never agreed to their terms of service, and even though their signal is being broadcast onto your property.

          In his example, he was monitoring the traffic of friends with their consent. In your DirectTV example, you're monitoring the traffic without their consent (you only have consent to use the decoder, not look at the traffic directly). There's a big difference there legally. The DMCA was meant to curb sn

      • You have a point about circumventing EULAs to reverse engineer protocols. Thank heaven the DMCA was created to plug that nasty loop-hole!

        And it is a win-win. We win because now we can all rest easier knowing that big existing companies have less pressure to waste money on technical innovation. And companies also win because we taxpayers pay for DMCA enforcement through our federal tax dollars! (Or did I get the win-win backward, they win the first, we win on the second? Ahhh, forget it.)
      • You got a very good point, Especially if you own the LAN that your two friends are on. You gave them to permission to be on your network. It being your network it would seem you could do whatever you want with captured packets. You have a legal right to sniff your own network. When it is on the wire it is TCP IP packets these are built using open standards and you own the hardware and the wire it is traveling on. There is no M$ on the wire. Bill and Steve's lawyers will figure something out.
        • In this case, EULA should not forget to prohibit usage of the software that uses the said protocol in an environment where the user at the same time doesn't agree not to give permission to the network provider to sniff the network.

          In other words, if the EULA is well written, it will allow to hold the user acocuntable for damage to the software provider caused by as many forms of potentially hurtful (to the software provider) usages as possible.
      • your friends go to jail

        but hey, you get rich

      • I observe and reverse-engineer an over-the-wire file transfer protocol between two computers owned by my friends.

        It's not really about the protocol. Even though you are interested in the protocol's innerworkings, you are essentially eavesdropping on a private 'conversation' (of course unless you own the network transport and make the permission to eavesdrop as a part of the network usage agreement).

        It appears this case would be treated as eavesdropping, for which I believe there are some pretty uncon
        • It's not really about the protocol. Even though you are interested in the protocol's innerworkings, you are essentially eavesdropping on a private 'conversation'

          Remember: In this example, the two endpoints are on systems run by my friends. It's their own content that's being moved over the wire, and it's understood that they don't mind me watching.
          • Yep, so essentially that means that if the EULA is good enough, it will try to not allow the use of the software in an environment where the holder of the license on usage of that software at the same time gives any third party consent to eavesdropping.

            This way, the software producer ensures that they can hold the end user accountable for damages incurred by letting (and notice that I used 'letting' not 'actively preventing') someone sniff those packets.
            • In theory, I suppose that's possible. I've yet to see it done in practice.

              Remember, the top of this thread was roughly someone saying "I can't believe Samba was developed without breaching any EULAs".
              • Remember, the top of this thread was roughly someone saying "I can't believe Samba was developed without breaching any EULAs".

                What I'd like to know as a follow-up though is whether you can pull a reverse engineering feat just like Samba even today legally?

                Even if the EULA were to prohibit the users from letting other people do e.g. network traffic sniffing (or other reverse engineering), it would still be possible for the engineer to 'go undercover' and do it so that those end users still couldn't be
                • First off, the DMCA has a loophole for reverse engineering done for purposes of interoperability.

                  Second, it's quite straightforward to demonstrate that one engaged in reverse-engineering -- the same way you demonstrate in court that you went through a clean-room process: Affidavats and work-product from the involved staff. (In clean-room reverse engineering, one maintains a Chinese wall between reverse-engineering and product development staff; this was the process used when reproducing the IBM PC's BIOS).

    • Re:EULA, DMCA and Reverse Engineering. (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Because along the way, there was some ruling or whatnot, I don't recall exactly, that said a protocol can inherently be reverse-engineered, despite any EULAs about it.

      I think the issue is allowing competition. By locking a protocol, the protocol's owner essentially controls the market around that protocol. But people have the right to interop with that service.

      This was a big point about the IBM antitrust suit, about the AT&T antitrust lawsuit, etc.

    • AFAIK SMB used to be an open protocol, so there wasn't any reverse-engineering involved. CIFS might be a different story.
      • Actually it was reverse-engineered first, then published, then changed with only occasional efforts to publish the changes.

        --dave

      • This is how I remember the story (which, I think, was in the intro to an earlier edition of one of the O'reilly Samba books... Can't seem to find an online link to corroborate it though): Andrew Tridgell reverse engineered the NetBIOS protocol to link a DOS pc with a unix box using packet captures. He then contacted the original developers of smb at IBM (not Microsoft!) and found that most of the information he needed to create his implementation was documented and readily available. In other words, he did
    • My guess is some EULA(s) must have been violated.

      In Europe at least it is an explictly recognised right of a user to reverse engineer software to the extent necessary to make it interoperate with any other software you have. EULAs cannot exclude this right, and you often see it specifically mentioned that you are allowed to do this in European EULAs.

    • In the Netherlands you can still reverse engineer, even if a EULA forbids it. Once you've paid for it it's yours to do with what you wish. If you want to stick it through a decompiler or examine the assembly you can.

      Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I remember correctly the DMCA even provides for reverse engineering if it is for interoperability that the provider won't or can't provide. So if some provider of software doesn't and won't provide a feature it's in your right to create that feature. IANAL so don
    • Isn't samba based on RFC 1001 (written in the 80's)? I suspect Windows used the same documentation. Two things not covered by that RFC are NT 3/4 domain controllers and ADS domain controllers - neither of which samba work with all that reliably.

  • It's simple (Score:5, Insightful)

    by michelcultivo ( 524114 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @09:06PM (#11568522) Journal
    Sun dominate the Enterprise users and Microsoft dominate the low-end users with their software, one is trying to acquire knowledge from another. Very simple, even a penguin [linux.com] can see this.
    • Problem is that Microsoft's vastly more likely to eat Sun's lunch than vice-versa. The most probable outcome from all this is that MS gets more headway at the top of the market while Sun collapses into a White Dwarf [nasa.gov]. Since Microsoft is the monopolist /. justifiably loves to hate, that would be a Bad Thing.

      Sorry, the astronomy metaphors are too easy...

  • I was there (Score:5, Interesting)

    by harikiri ( 211017 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @09:20PM (#11568621)
    I remember James talking about the whole Microsoft/Sun collaboration. Apparently there is some confusion over what the legal agreement between the two is.

    The main thing I remember him saying was that there are issues in working with MS, in that even if MS lets them have insider info on say their filesystem, they can't release this info to the Samba developers because of NDA's and IP licensing restrictions. So they have to be really careful and get signoff before they can open certain things up.

    Another interesting discussion was the whole SWT vs SWING debate. James remained an advocate of Swing, and accused SWT of falling into the same traps that AWT had back in the day. From what he said, it sounded like he was saying that Swing is flexible and powerful enough to do whatever you want, but that was also its downside. An example he used was back when they were auditing Netbeans 3.6 to figure out why it was so slow. Apparently the developers had gone overboard with monitoring events, and a single drag of a window resizer would trigger thousands of events (an "event storm" he called it), which would also in turn spawn a bunch of "stormlets", small event loops (events triggering other events which trigger other events ad nauseum). Apparently this was the cause of the slowness.

    One of the people who was asking a question of James asked the audience to raise their hands if they used Eclipse. I would guess that around 90% of the audience raised their hands.

    When asked his opinion on the IBM vs SCO court case, his response: "I want some of what they're smoking". He didn't get asked about Sun's IP stance however.

    I also have a picture that I took of the cake for the 10th anniversary of Java. It's sitting on my phone at the moment, but I saw some other attendees take snapshots too.

    Sorry this is a little haphazard. I didn't really take notes. :)

    • Re:I was there (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by flacco ( 324089 )
      Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...

      funniest goddamn sig i've seen yet

    • Swing not the real stumbling block (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Latent Heat ( 558884 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @12:35AM (#11569533)
      From my perspective, Swing is not the real stumbling block.

      Sun has this whole take-it-or-leave it notion about Java, but I have been interested in migrating to Java by rewriting parts of my apps. The JNI allows Java to call C++, but it also allows C++ to call Java, and while parts of it are a little cumbersome, it is well-documented and you can wrap the plumbing in a set of C++ and Java classes. My notion is that I can start with the non-GUI parts of the program, and perhaps even some of the GUI parts by using the MVC and strategy design patterns to uncouple code from the Windows API code, and over time develop something that is easier to migrate away from Windows. Oh, don't worry Chairman Bill, I am probably not leaving Windows anytime soon, it is just that Java has good features and libraries and I am interested in using it.

      For mixed Windows API-managed code programming, I like C++/Java better than C++/C# because to access C# modules from Windows API C++, you have to go through a lot of Windows jive with the GAC and other bits of Klingon language. Connecting C++ and Java through the JNI seems easier to me than connecting unmanaged C++ to C#.

      The hassle is that I am really reluctant to make any program I distribute dependent on a Java install on a Windows computer because there is so much to go wrong -- not setting up the PATH, CLASSPATH considerations, and so on. It is not insurmountable to get Java going under Windows, but it is something for users of one's software to not get right.

      If MS and Sun were to truly make nice, I would like to see the Java runtime integrated with Windows so you could count on it being there if you distribute apps under Windows. Heck, I would settle for the .NET runtime being part of Windows, but even that you have to download and there is a futz factor setting it up.

      • I've used swing for the last four years, and I haven't had any performance problems on newer machines. Sure it's a little slower, but that's really not a problem. However, I did find it easier to use C# and a C++ dll easier than using JNI. But, I could never find any good documentation on JNI. I would be nice if you could build exes on Windows that spawned the Sun Java VM kinda like C# does.
      • You could just ship a JRE at a specific version and service level with your code ? This is what some middleware vendors do at the server side, so they are shipping their code with the JVM and Class library code they have tested against.
      • Another option might be to implement your C++ parts as remote objects and then get your java gui to interoperate with them via corba/iiop or xml/rpc. The cool thing, if you use xml/rpc, is that you eventually operate in an asp mode, the gui is downloaded but the business parts sit on a network server somewhere.

        JNI is pretty common, I've never used it, but it kind of scares me to extend the JVM. I worry about stability (my C skills suck) and migration to newer versions of the VM.
    • harikiri wrote:...even if MS lets them have insider info on say their filesystem, they can't release this info [...] because of NDA's and IP licensing restrictions.

      I used to work with the Sun SMB team, who had licensed code from AT&T, who in turn licensed NT server code from Microsoft. Only a small group of developers were permitted access to the code, and they didn't even give fellow Sun people doing rotations with them (me!) access.

      Which was good, as I am a minor contributor to Samba, and I didn'

  • From the article:

    "... but we can't then turn around and be part of the open-source Samba project, and make Samba actually work."

    I wasn't aware that Samba didn't work.

    Seems to work fine for me.

  • Had me then dropped me (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KarmaBlackballed ( 222917 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @09:24PM (#11568648) Homepage Journal
    The last paragraph of the news story ends like this: In the hour-and-a-half session, Gosling answered many questions on a range of topics, including Eclipse and other Java IDEs (integrated development environments), DVD technology, security in Microsoft's .Net platform, the future of embedded software and more.

    Only problem is the author thinks that's all we care to know about that. Sorta like writing "yadayadayada".

    No need to actually report what his answers were. (Guess only an extreme geek like myself cares to hear what he said about these obscure technical topics.)
    • I'd really like to hear the whole of the talk as well. Anyone out there have anything else with more detail?
    • I said the same thing while at work.. Heh! wheres the interesting part of the article?

      FWIW I did a quick google & google news search. nothing.

    • I was there, hugely underqualified amongst a room packed with full-on Java devs. There were about 600 attendees. Where I get this completely wrong, please be gentle and help out, don't skin me alive, please.

      My recollections:

      Eclipse and other Java IDEs

      I recall James commenting that the presence of other Java IDEs was healthy as it promotes competition and encourages the best dev tools. He used a sports analogy about needing more than one team to have a match. Two of the day's briefings were about t

  • More is Really Less (Score:5, Interesting)

    by value_added ( 719364 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @09:33PM (#11568693)

    Gosling offers a bit of insight when he says:

    Reverse-engineering in the United States is now "legal for stuff, except stuff doing digital rights management," or DRM, he said. "So what has been happening is folks like Microsoft have been putting DRM into everything. DRM has been put into places you wouldn't think would make a whole lot of sense, like the document format being wrapped in DRM stuff...Under the sheets, the major justification is to make reverse-engineering illegal."

    Bill Gates, on the other hand, offers a very different (albeit hardly suprising) point of view in a recent NY Times article [nytimes.com].

    ``Over the years, our industry has tried many approaches to come to grips with the heterogeneity of software,'' Gates said, ``But the solution that has proven consistently effective -- and the one that yields the greatest success for developers today -- is a strong commitment to interoperability.''

    Microsoft is also facing competition from Linux and other software that can be copied and modified freely. Proponents of such software say its flexible distribution makes it easier to design to work with other software.

    Gates argued, however, that open source software encourages the proliferation of different software systems, making it harder to integrate them with other proprietary systems.

    Many Microsoft products already work with other non-Microsoft products, and the company will build more interoperability into the design of its products, Gates said.

    So, there you have it. Things are fine, and getting better.

    • Gates argued, however, that open source software encourages the proliferation of different software systems, making it harder to integrate them with other proprietary systems.

      that's what open standards, file formats, and protocols are for - comp sci 101, you big fucking lying piece of shit goony bastard.

  • I was there and asked him a couple of questions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sonamchauhan ( 587356 ) <sonamc.gmail@com> on Thursday February 03, 2005 @09:49PM (#11568792) Journal
    I was there at this event and asked James Gosling a couple of questions.

    "You spoke earlier about Jython and Ruby -- how Sun does not want to "choose" on the de-facto scripting language for Java.
    Will Sun follow the lead of .NET - and now Perl6 - in supporting multiple languages that compile and run within the same virtual machine?"

    I impression I got about his answer was: No, Sun won't publicly support multiple languages compiling to the JVM like Microsoft does in .NET (though he did not say this explicitly).

    He reiterated the JVM did support multiple languages (the examples he gave were Fortran and Lisp) compiling to Java bytecode and running in the JVM. He said that the JVM architecture has constraints due to which languages like C/C++ cannot run in the JVM efficiently or safely. He said Microsoft actually made a big deal about their support for 'Managed C++' in .NET. He poked fun at this - saying due their support for pointers, etc, their Managed C++ implementation had security security holes "big enough to drive several trucks through".

    "Follow up question: Will the JVM architecture ever change? The Parrot/Perl6 folks talk about how their new Register-Based VM architecture is inherently superior to stack based VMs. Any comments?" [Java uses a stack based VM ]
    His answer boiled down to: "The Perl guys are wrong". He mentioned a few other complex points to justify this. An interesting thing he mentioned was that an early development version of the JVM used a register based VM "that no one other than me saw", and that he changed Java over to a stack based VM since the register based one "sucked so badly".

    At the end of the event, the hosts (Sun Australia I think) brought out a big cake to celebrate the 10th birthday of Java. Gosling said that the day (Wednesday 2/2/05) was "uncomfortably close to the 10th anniversary of the first release of the JVM". The audience gave three hip-hip-hurrahs.

  • the hyperlink is to news.com.com? Why would CNET buy com.com?

  • Doesn't Make Sense... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Comatose51 ( 687974 ) on Thursday February 03, 2005 @11:04PM (#11569181) Homepage
    Usually pacts with the devil take on greater significance as you get closer and closer to death (*cough* Sun *cough*)...

  • News to who? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gnovos ( 447128 ) <gnovos@ c h i p p e d . net> on Friday February 04, 2005 @12:25AM (#11569505) Homepage Journal
    I woked at a company a few years ago that was a newly minted "Microsoft Partner". Microsoft came in one day and we all had a big meeting. The rep told us, point blank, that they were developing the same software as us, but were a little behind. The deal was this: We'll liscense them all our software at a n unfathomably great rate, they'll promote our company for two years to thier other partners, and then they'll release thier own version of the software at that point, having built in all the improvements that they can from examining our software, and undercut us.

    If we don't agree to the terms, they'll release thier software now and compete with us directly withotu the two-year gap.

    So basically, that was life as a Microsoft Partner.
  • They talked about supporting MS AD for their new Solaris 10 release last year. I haven't heard a thing on this subject. Anyone here know if this is coming?
  • Sun is afraid of the PR consequences of their relationship with Microsoft, that's why they are trying to downplay it.

    Their agreement has had significant consequences, and Sun's behavior towards open source (e.g., Schwartz's rantings, their fake patent grant, their Java efforts, their attempt to position Solaris against Linux, etc.) show that Sun is not an unequivocal supporter of free software or open source software.
    • Sun is afraid of the PR consequences of their relationship with Microsoft, that's why they are trying to downplay it.

      No, Sun is afraid of the technical and hence business consequences of their relationship with Microsoft. The latter has a three step process of dealing with "partners:"

      1) Steal their technology

      2) Make a rival product

      3) Destroy partner, and possibly purchase the dry husk that remains of a once-lush company for a song.

      The most significant consequence of Sun's agreement will probably be Micros

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • The patents that sun granted aren't all up for expiring soon and have to do with operating systems, unlike the patents granted by IBM.

      Open source doesn't just mean linux. They have released a lot of open source software. They are releasing their operating system as open source. This creates real competition in the open source kernel/operating system world. Look at other competing open source projects like Geronimo/JBoss, MySQL/PostgreSQL, Apache/ZOPE, etc.

      Projects like Geronimo and JBoss are both op

  • I wonder if Gosling is still into them.

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