By Jim McGregeor12/21/96

In the cyber-news today, we stumble across a distrubing trend. Microsoft violated their Java license agreement with Sun Microsystems. Sun, maker of a slightly popular UNIX based workstation, has been an opponent of Microsoft for some time. Sun, soon after developing Java, licensed it in hopes of "Soothing past differences between [Sun and Microsoft], as well as paving the way for future developments." There was a clause within the agreement stating that Java could NOT be used as a stand-alone application tool. Yet, in a torrent of products, Microsoft did, in fact, breech this clause. Upon so, Sun nullified the agreement. Microsoft issued the statment "It was sad that we could not have worked together to fix this problem and continue development."
Microsoft was given leeway under the Java contract. This is well demonstrated. In the product Visual J++ several liberties were allowed. For instance, Java was not supposed to have any added functions, but there are undocumented functions within Microsoft's J++. Sun was noted to be "overlooking" this. The most probable reason is that Sun didn't wish to incur the wrath of Microsoft. Sun, making the step into intranets and the Internet, is working closely with other companies such as IBM and Netscape. But due to the large Microsoft reach and market share, Sun has been timid. However in this final violation, the license was revoked.
This comes at an interesting time, because ActiveX, a type of scripting language with Java-like capabilities, is now peaking. Microsoft has been reportedly dumping its resources off of Java and into ActiveX, which Microsoft completly owns. This rapid move leaves many Microsoft J++ users at a virtual dead end. Despite that, Java WILL survive. Microsoft still seems to be preparing to focus more heavily on new products directly rivaling Sun's.