Throwing a kink into Sun Micro's lawsuit against Microsoft, last week a three judge panel reversed District Judge Ronald Whyte's decision that forced Microsoft to change the Java Virtual Machines in Windows 98, Internet Explorer and VJ++ [see NewsSource, Nov. 23 '98]. The panel said that while Sun is likely to win the case, Judge Whyte should have given a better explanation of his decision, since injunctions are rare in contract dispute cases. Whyte can now reconsider the case and issue another ruling, or let Microsoft go back to using its own polluted version of Java until the actual trial begins.

Shortly after naming a new CEO, Compaq fired over 100 people working in Compaq West, a lab based near Microsoft's Redmond campus in Bellevue Washington. That basically eliminates any future development of Alpha NT, since the people in that lab were the only employees of Compaq or Microsoft actively working on it. Microsoft was obviously caught off guard, with plans to support the Alpha platform with Windows 2000 and several Alpha 2000 betas already in existence. Microsoft said that its own employees will finish the upcoming ServicePack 6 for Alpha NT, after which that platform will no longer be supported. Compaq defended its decision, explaining that the majority of Alpha buyers use Linux, Tru64 Unix, and Open VMS - making it hard to justify the extra expense of Alpha NT.

Drugstore.com has named Bill Gates' wife Melinda to its board of directors. Gates is apparently intended as a replacement for Jed Smith, who recently stepped down from his duties as president and board member. Gates will be working with Peter Neupert, who quit his job as a Microsoft vice president last year [see NewsSource, July 27 '98] to become a Drugstore.com manager. This will be Gates' first job since she quit Microsoft in 1994 to marry her billionaire boss. Drugstore.com - which is half owned by Amazon.com - sells cosmetics and prescription drugs.

In another deal with a recently founded company, Microsoft has announced a plan to sell postage to Office users through Stamps.com, a company selling printable stamps over the Internet. According to their press release, Microsoft will make Stamps.com software available from the Office User web site. No word on how the agreement benefits Microsoft, but it probably isn't a coincidence that estranged Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen owns eight percent of that company.

Last week at Dell's annual DirectConnect conference, Bill Gates told 1,200 managers that Microsoft is "very close" to shipping Windows 2000. However he wouldn't give any exact dates, and failed to mention most industry insiders expect Microsoft to miss its October 1st target for Win2k Release Candidate 1. RC1 would, of course, indicate that Microsoft is prepared to start cutting CDs. If Gates is being unusually honest it would set up Windows 2000 for release during Fall Comdex this November - just in time for the holiday shopping season. However, going by the information we get from beta testers and other sources, don't expect the thing to ship before President's Day 2000.

According to a source in Utah, Microsoft has been actively trying to hire NDS systems engineers away from Novell. The source claims a Microsoft recruiter recently blanketed Novell SEs with phone calls and e-mail, trying to convince the people behind top-selling NDS directory software to jump ship and work for The Behemoth. However, the source also said the calls were unsuccessful - none of Novell's engineers went for the job offers.

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