Another batch of documents--around 2,000 pages--was unsealed in the Sun/Microsoft Java dispute.
Although the documents introduce no new issues, they provide a fascinating glimpse into each company's paranoia about the other.
Bill Gates' widely publicized comment, "This scares the hell out of me," was a response to a Microsoft employee who went on a "think week" about Java in September of 1996, according to an unsealed e-mail.
"Java has a competitive advantage in its simplicity of implementation precisely because it isn't language neutral," wrote Adam Bosworth. "They have brilliantly used the language to solve problems where we (C++) write lots of explicit code to what amounts to runtime plumbing code that's hard to write and hard to understand. Java Beans takes Java to a new level. We must acknowledge that Java competes with COM if we want to understand what to do about it."
Serious threat to Windows
The documents show Gates driving employees to figure out what to do about Java, which he and other Microsoft executives saw as a serious threat to Windows. "Supporting JDK 1.1 is fine, but I am very hard core about not supporting JDK 1.2," Gates wrote to John Ludwig on May 14, 1997.
"I really need to understand where we're going to draw the line because it's a slippery slope. If you think we should support the JDK 1.2 that's fine, but you will really have to explain why and where it stops."
Microsoft executives debated doing a Java Office, according to the documents, and also debated how much they should allow Java to compete against the Windows API. Executives are shown planning how to take over the Java tools market. One marketing document discusses setting low pricing for Visual J++ 6.0, which was a departure from Microsoft's earlier Java tools because it made Java a language for doing Windows applications, like Visual Basic or Visual C++.
Microsoft executives also discussed in January, 1997, forming with other tools vendors "another center for gravity for the Java language," according to a series of e-mails. The Java Language Coalition User Advisory Panel was an attempt to bring Borland, Symantec, Metrowerks and PowerSoft into a group that would promote Java under the auspices of a standards body until Sun turned Java over to a standards body. Symantec and PowerSoft rejected the idea.
Feelings were mutual
Sun was also fearful of Microsoft, and documents show executives discussing how to extricate Sun from a possibly bad contract. Suggestions included altering the Java compatibility tests against Microsoft and trying to renegotiate the contract, which a Sun spokeswoman claims Sun did not do.
Sun was racing to build the Java platform, which was incomplete, while trying to prevent Microsoft from taking advantage of it. In a September, 1996 e-mail, former Sun Chief Technology Officer Eric Schmidt proposes that Sun, IBM and Netscape define an "Internet Application" interface on top of Netscape as a way of supporting additional Java classes, since Microsoft could not be contractually forced to support them.
"There are many components missing from the Java story and not sufficient time to get them all in place by Sun standing alone," Schmidt wrote. "There is simply too much ActiveX-based code now in place due to Microsoft's Internet turnaround...Both Borland and IBM have complained to me about this, and the press is beginning to figure it out."
Needed more than NCs
Schmidt said Network Computers and JavaStations would not sell in sufficient volumes to get enough Pure Java applications into the market.
Sun cofounder Bill Joy also worried about Netscape, which he saw as having a misguided focus on browser plug-ins rather than Java. "Remember that we did the deal with Microsoft after talking to them. They said they thought it was a good idea," Joy wrote in February, 1996. "Input from them in the meantime suggests they are changing their mind, but it's too late."
Carla Schroer, the engineer in charge of Java compatibility testing, scolded a Sun employee for shipping the JavaOS without consulting her team on test results. "I can only hope that you are right in your assessment of test validity," she wrote in October of 1997. "If you have made errors in this it could be extremely damaging to Sun and to JavaSoft."
U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte is expected to rule at any time on whether to grant Sun an injunction halting shipment of Windows 98 and Visual J++ 6.0.
