Microsoft rival Sun Microsystems, one of the software maker's sharpest critics, lauded a federal appeals court ruling that Microsoft had abused its monopoly power and urged the courts to curb its advance in Internet-related software.
Sun said the appeals court's decision had vindicated the view that Microsoft was "a monopolist and has abused its monopoly power in very significant ways."
"We hope that the Court will act decisively to ensure that Microsoft's illegal activity - and the harm that it has done to the industry and to consumers - is brought to an end forcefully and permanently," Sun said in a statement.
But McNealy has also said the proposed solution that an appeals court overturned - breaking Microsoft into two companies, one that sold the Windows operating system and one that sold applications - would have created two monsters from one, or "Baby Bills," a reference to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.
In April 2000, Sun had lobbied for the more radical solution of breaking up Microsoft's operating system business into three competitors and hiving off the Internet-oriented and business applications side as well.
McNealy has accused Microsoft of making software that was incompatible with the offerings of rivals, thus discouraging competition and amounting to a kind of "planned economy."
McNealy has said splitting Microsoft into an operating systems company and an applications company would have just made two monopolies.
As he put it in 1999, it would be "like one of those horror movies where you cut the monster in half, and now you have two monsters."
