I think that a great deal of Microsoft's tiff with Sun is a struggle to define conventions in computing. Sun has claimed that it is committed to an ethos of openness in computing languages. It presents Java as a meta-operating system with functionality across most operating systems. Microsoft has been accused of attempting to 'Balkanize' Java by adding extensions to the language (in doing so, dissipating the promise of openness offered by Sun).

Here's my question for our guests: To what extent has the community of applications developers, OEMs, etc. embraced the objective sought by Sun?

The implications of this answer may have implications for the role of courts in the legal proceedings. In a well-known contracts case, a court refused to hold a bidder for a construction project to the bid he submitted after a contracter relied on his bid. Our contracts professor suggested that the judge elected not to intervene because of shared understandings in the construction industry. Once it became known that the bidder was known for reneging on his bids, other contractors would refuse to deal with him. The contractor would be punished by mechanisms outside of the court.

If shared understandings exist in the computer community about the desirability of 'openness', the court may be able to satisfactorily resolve the dispute between Sun and Microsoft by letting the computer community punish MS for deviating from the norm of openness by exercising individual choice.

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1998

Answers

Murata

This was a question for MS for the visitors next monday.

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1998

Question above

This was a question for MS for the visitors next monday.

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1998