Chris DiBona's Blog

If the settlement came on the 1st, would you have beleived it?

If the settlement had come yesterday, would anyone have believed it? Sun and Microsoft settled their century long trial with a somewhat largish payment of $1.6b changing hands as part of the deal. The money is a handy thing, I'd imagine, but the funny thing was that both parties said they would collaborate on technology, etc, etc....

Collaborate? Do you guys think this is legit, or is it post-settlement afterglow happytalk? Well, I know which one I think it is, but I'd love to hear what you guys think.

An interesting side-effect is that this frees Microsoft to do a dividend. Although I can't imagine anyone really believing the line that Microsoft was holding back because of sun. That's a bit far fetched.

I should also point out that this guy, Charles DiBona, who is quoted in this ar ticle, ain't me. He's some financial analyst Johnnie come lately to the computer business. You could say we have a namespace issue going on here.

Anyhow, in about a week, LJN will feature a Kevin Bedell interview of BEA Vice President Bob Griswold, who is in charge of JRockit. This is our first outside article, so I'm looking forward to that. We're still accepting abstracts and have a few others in the pipeline. Just forward them on to me and/or Art. I'd also be interested in seeing what kind of articles the readership would like to see, so comment if you like on that.

Comments

• Sun had to choose between shame and war...
  "The nation had to choose between shame and war. We have chosen shame.We shall get the war as well." - Winston Churchill, in reply to BritishPrime Minister Chamberlain's "Peace in our time"

  First of all the above must be put in perspective to the IBM and Novell Alliance under the Linux flag. Understandably both Sun and Microsoft
  feel threatened by the formidable progress Novell has made integrating Linux, Gnome and OpenOffice.org with Novell's desktop services. Both Novell and IBM are shifting many of their own internal desktops over to
  Linux, and Novell CEO has stated at Braintrust that almost all of the desktops used within Novell will be Linux based by early 2005.

  It must irk both Sun and Microsoft that IBM and Novell are doing so using technology that both had a part in developing, in Sun's case GNOME and OpenOffice and Microsoft's case Mono.

  Aside from the monetary payoff, most of the gains for Sun do not make any sense for Sun in the long term.

  Windows Certification for Sun is the equivalent of hosting hostile enemy bases on your own territory. Sun, like Apple, relies on a separate identity from Microsoft to position itself in the server Market. Windows Certification for Sun hardware is an oxymoron, as it is possible to host Microsoft's OS on more stock standard and cheaper Dell, HP and whitebox hardware, without any significant loss of performance or quality. At least with Solaris and Linux, Sun is able to completely hack, recompile to tune the kernels and libraries to take advantage of any Sun specific hardware.

  Sun's agreement to Microsoft Communications Protocol Program represents a real sellout by Sun. Until now, the only major vendors to sign up to the protocol agreement have been Cisco and guess who, The SCO Group ( only after the "investment" by Microsoft ). Even the U.S. Justice Department expressed concern that Microsoft has not completely lived up to its agreement.
  http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-5142795.html
  Just as with the SCO Group, it appears Microsoft has effectively paid off Sun to accept this agreement.

  Of the legal settlements, where Sun that states that "the agreements announced today satisfy the objectives it was pursuing in the EU actions pending against Microsoft", is the reason why the monetary payoff to Sun was so large. Sun was one of the companies that complained to the EU over Microsoft's licensing of CIFS information in a manner incompatible to SAMBA's GPL license.

  When the EU Competition Commission initiated the latest investigation against Microsoft in 2001, they included the following in their press release
  http://europa.eu.int/rapid/start/cgi/guesten.ksh?p_action.gettxt=gt&doc=IP/01/1232|0|AGED&lg=EN&display=

  The last statement is very important, since the CIFS file and print services software that the protocol complaint was based on is the GPL'ed SAMBA. I don't believe that without Sun's outright acceptance of the Microsoft Protocol agreement, Mario Monti, Competition Commissioner, would accept any Licensing from Microsoft for the required information that would be a "friend-enemy" scheme incompatible with the same GPL.

  Posted by: nzheretic on April 02, 2004 at 05:42 PM

• Wearing a Customer Hat
  Readers might recognize my name as the LJN community manager. Chris' comments should be enough to convince any skeptic that LJN is a community oriented site and not a place with a Sun spin or where we flog Sun's products or point of view.

  I spent the first part of career coming up through the ranks in corporate IT, and I've still got some "customer hats" lying around. I put one on to consider these recent developments.

  Customers (actually not a dirty word!) have heterogeneous environments. Interoperability is critical. Religious wars and appetitie for conflict among vendors do not help achieve customers' business objectives. From a customer point of view, peace and cooperation between Microsoft and Sun is a good thing.

  Winston Churchill quotes are nice but I think nzheretic has posited a false choice with his selection. IT shops that have products from both companies are probably thinking of the last five words of a Churchill speech delivered on June 18, 1940 in the House of Commons. "This Was Their Finest Hour"

  Posted by: arthurgould on April 04, 2004 at 12:20 PM

• "Wearing" the Sun spin
  Firsly, the "Finest Hour" speach you refer to was over a year after Churchill's prediction of war had come to pass.

  QUOTE
  What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."
  UNQUOTE -- British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, on June 18, 1940, at the House of Commons

  Thankfully, Churchill's next action as not to sign a treaty with Hitler, accepting gold looted from occupied states as payment for dmages done.

  The issue of interoperability with Microsoft's desktop products was key to both the antitrust lawsuit brought by Sun and the current EU investigation. Even the DOJ has to admit that the current Microsoft Communications Protocol Program has "fallen short" of fully satisfying the settlement. ( http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-5142795.html ).
  The European Commission's case was strong, and they were in a position to force Microsoft to fully disclose the information required to allow SAMBA, the software that Sun itself based the complaint to the commision on, to fully interoperate for file, print and directory services.

  The Sun customer is also a consumer who, like Sun itself, has greatly benefited from the abundance of good quality open source developed and free licensed software. Even Sun new "Java" desktop environment is GPL'ed Linux and GNOME, the majority of which was developed outside of Sun, is free for Sun to bundle and sell. Sun customers directly benefit from an open development enviroment where the infomation required to develop and the right to interoperate remains royalty free.

  The press release of Sun does not give much hope that royalty free status will remain the case.
  http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2004-04/sunflash.20040402.3.html

  I have publicly defended Sun's record of openess in many public forums. I have praised, encouraged and defended Sun's moves to futher open up the JCP to insure that contributers to the standard grant the right for open source project to implement the standards and for everyone to use the open source licensed implementations royalty free.

  The Sun customers have directly benefited from this right to freely interoperate, but for how much longer?

  If you chose to quote Churchill on Sun's customers then maybe this might be more appropriate.

  QUOTE
  From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.
  UNQUOTE -- Churchill "Iron Curtain Speech", March 5, 1946

  Posted by: nzheretic on April 04, 2004 at 05:06 PM

• First fallout: Rich Green quitting Sun in "disgust"

  http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/36780.html

  The first major fallout from Sun's capitulation to Microsoft has occurred with vice president and Java defender Rich Green quitting Sun in "disgust," The Register has confirmed.

  Posted by: nzheretic on April 04, 2004 at 10:47 PM

• What happend to the line breaks?
  The old forum respected line breaks in the comments. If this is no longer an option, would it be to much trouble to filter the old comments replacing line breaks with the br tag?

  Posted by: nzheretic on April 25, 2004 at 02:19 AM

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