Friday, October 17, 1997

Jedd Haas gets the last word on New Orleans. "This is the Third World. Once you accept that, no problem."

More New Orleans and Java stuff on "Mail Starting 10/17/97".

The Frontier 5 process continues. 5.0a5/Mac is released. Check out the release notes and the download page.

Opera Software makes a lean and fast web browser for Windows and has a fascinating proposal for Mac, Linux and OS/2 users.

On Webintosh, Todd Stauffer has an interesting point of view on Steve Jobs and Apple. I agree that Ellen Hancock would have made a good CEO, but today the company is led by people Jobs put in place, so if someone else were to be the CEO , there would certainly be yet another reorg (a polite word for the firing of execs), and probably more projects would be killed. Apple's precarious business can't take too much more of this. They need a hot product and a clear mission for its employees, developers and users.

Java Lobby: Differences between MS SDK 2.0 for Java and JDK 1.1.

Oooops! There was a typo on the "Open Mike URLs" page from the New Orleans conference. To everyone who was in New Orleans, I had a great time! We gotta do it again sooooon.

News.com: Lawyers look at the Sun lawsuit. Says Jack Russo of Russo & Hale, "It's really over who is the leader and who's the follower. Sun wants to be the leader and pope of the Java religion. It says, 'If you want to participate in the religion, you have to give us some homage. Microsoft in the name of doing its own innovations, is saying, 'We want to help define this religion; we are as sacred as Sun in this respect.'"

After reviewing the contract and the software, we see it the same way. The obvious solution is for Microsoft to cede to Sun the exclusive right of defining Java. It would be reasonable for Microsoft to, as a quid pro quo, to not distribute Java and Sun's classes with Windows 98 and MSIE. But Microsoft has the largest and most powerful software distribution system in the business, and to deny that distribution to Java would cripple it. Bottom line: Sun may have shot Java in a vital organ with this lawsuit.

Disclaimer: Russo & Hale is UserLand's lawfirm and Jack Russo is a personal friend for many years.