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Microsoft Takes Offensive in Sun Case |
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Posted by
Raul Ruiz on Saturday, February 22 @ 06:54:26 EST Contributed by HowardGilbert |
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HowardGilbert writes "Microsoft filed its answer to Sun's claims and some counterclaims in the Maryland District Court today. Their brief, the full text of which is available here, is notable for its unusually forceful language. Reasonable people may dispute the Microsoft statement that Sun's Java initiative has been an abject failure. Lawyers always overstate their case. However, Microsoft points out that Java's success or failure was entirely on its merits and that Microsoft's contribution had a positive effect in favor of the language.
"For nearly a decade, Sun has instigated lawsuits against and governmental investigations of Microsoft based on alleged violations of antitrust and copyright laws in an effort to impede Microsoft's competition with Sun in the marketplace. Sun has no product strategy to counter Microsoft's investment in creating innovative and useful software, and therefore attempts to obstruct Microsoft through litigation."
Finally someone has said to the courts what is blindingly obvious to programmers who work with this software. There has never been either substance or logic to any of the claims made against Microsoft's version of Java. Worse, to the extent that Sun dragged government lawyers into the mess, the resulting case was a clear attempt at censorship of the content of a publication. Yes I know that government normally tries to censor pornography or issues of national security. In this case the DOJ got fooled into claiming that Microsoft broke the law by publishing a Java runtime because it could seamlessly communicate with programs written in other languages and because it offered a different view of event handling in a multithreaded environment. Just because the expression of an idea is mostly of interest to a technical professional audience doesn't make the attempt to censor or surpress that idea by spurious antitrust or copyright claims any less dispicable.
If you are willing to try and understand the ideas that Microsoft was trying to express in its version of Java, they are explained in the article The Tragedy of Microsoft and Java. Non programmers can still get most of the ideas if you don't chicken out the first time and unfamiliar term like "CORBA" is used.
Once you realize that there was a serious difference of opinion and a reasonable effort by Microsoft to make Java the best system it could be (by one set of objectives), then most of the Sun rhetoric in its legal briefs looks pretty sad.
Sun's current case is based on the claim that "anticompetitive acts" identified by Judge Jackson in the government antitrust case were responsible for "fragmenting" and "undermining" Java. People can argue whether the three acts, "developer deception", "First Wave agreements", and "pressure on Intel" were really illegal. There is absolutely no doubt, however, that they had no effect. Some real concrete data on effects was introduced in the Remedy part of the trial in the testimony of Kevin Murphy. He points out that no developers were actually deceived, and of the eight companies who actually got special non-public technial information through the First Wave agreements, they "had 14 applications in the program, of which 10 were definitely not written in Java. Of the remaining four applications, two run on multiple platforms and the other have been discontinued." In other words, the only two actual Java programs that came out of those who got special information were cross-platform pure Java and not Microsoft specific.
Programmers at Yale are generally fans of Java. We like Sun's Java where it is the best choice, and we have used Microsoft Java where it was the best choice. For many years everyone who activated their Yale NETID ran through some Microsoft Java code using Microsoft extensions to add an entry in the Windows domain. As a matter of public policy, we would be thrilled if Microsoft had to include Sun's Java runtime in every copy of Windows. However, as a matter of objective truth, Sun's behavior in court has been the worst example of flat out lying and abuse of the judicial process. Sun's programming language is great. Their morality and honesty are non-existant.
Microsoft's language in the new brief may be a little ove the top. However, the direction of Java and its relationship to .NET are matters that programmers should be allowed to decide for ourselves. They should compete freely in the marketplace of ideas. When anyone goes into court to supress an idea, as Sun did with Microsoft's view of Java, then it is natural to question their own motives and integrity. The strongest case in favor of Microsoft's disparagment of Java in the brief is the behavior of Sun throughout this entire sad example of abusive litigation. Anyone who actually has a good idea should not be trying so hard to get the government to prevent the free expression of another opinion. On that issue alone, it would be refreshing if Microsoft prevailed in its counterclaim."
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Re: Microsoft Takes Offensive in Sun Case (Score: 1) by TomWiles on Saturday, February 22 @ 11:37:14 EST (User Info | Send a Message) | I am not sure I agree with most of the arguments presented by Microsoft.
1. SUN is the copyright holder of JAVA.
2. Microsoft JAVA is certainly a derivative work.
3. Microsoft did not suggest alterations that could have been encorporated into JAVA, as I understand the situation, Microsoft added extensions that SUN could not legally incorporate in their release that gave Microsoft a competative advantage (of their derivative work).
If SUN'S action is restricting innovation and detrimental to the public good, maybe we should be looking at Copyright Law rather than taking a harsh look at SUN'S actions.
Even in LINUX (Where the copyright holders have allowed free distribution of the source code and freely encourage anyone to make innovations of the OS) the copyright holders retain absolute control [well sort of -- it could be forked under the right circumstances] over what is included (or not included) in the LINUX Kernel.
Tom |
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Re: Microsoft Takes Offensive in Sun Case (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Saturday, February 22 @ 15:02:17 EST | "For nearly a decade, Sun has instigated lawsuits against and governmental investigations of Microsoft based on alleged violations of antitrust and copyright laws in an effort to impede Microsoft's competition with Sun in the marketplace.
This is true. However, the alleged violations of antitrust and copyright laws have been held by the courts to be ACTUAL violations of antitrust and copyright laws. Thus the efforts to impede Microsofts UNFAIR AND ILLEGAL "competition" with Sun are certainly appropriate.
Sun's current case is based on the claim that "anticompetitive acts" identified by Judge Jackson in the government antitrust case were responsible for "fragmenting" and "undermining" Java. People can argue whether the three acts, "developer deception", "First Wave agreements", and "pressure on Intel" were really illegal.
This is false. There is no argument -- they are illegal. The en banc appeals court unanimously upheld that part of the ruling and the Supreme Court refused review on the findings of fact or law. Sun also prevailed on the merits in the copyright case. End of story. In fact the antitrust ruling of the appeals court RIDICULED the MS view of intellecutal property. Microsoft and you are simply in denial.
Programmers at Yale are generally fans of Java. We like Sun's Java where it is the best choice, and we have used Microsoft Java where it was the best choice.
There is no legal form of "Microsoft Java". Your identification of "the best choice" seems to tolerate illegal activity. Frankly, by using J++ I believe that you too were commiting copyright infringement. Shame on you.
However, as a matter of objective truth, Sun's behavior in court has been the worst example of flat out lying and abuse of the judicial process.
Look, MS certainly was able to hire adequate representation in both the copyright and antitrust suits. The best lawyers money can buy made the points you are making and they lost unanimously on the merits. Sun prevailed. You don't even have a single judge who agrees with you. It's time to move on. |
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Re: Microsoft Takes Offensive in Sun Case (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Saturday, February 22 @ 18:20:24 EST | Sun's claim of Copyright protection has always been nonsense. Sun licensed its copyright to Microsoft, and the only legal question has been the license terms, not the copyright.
This really never mattered at all. The 9th Circuit both found "There is significant evidence to support the district court's holding that Sun has a reasonable likelihood of proving that Microsoft's Java compiler violated the compatibility provisions of the TLDA [Technology License and Distribution Agreement]"
Since it is the same contract that grants the licence and requires that MS passed the compatibility tests, even if you view compatibility as purely a contractual provision, MS breached the whole contract. They can't use part of it to claim they have a licence to modify and distribute work copyrighted by Sun while they simultaneously fail to abide by a separate provision of that contract.
The only reason the issue was argued was procedural: If the compatibility requirement was a separate contract covenent rather than a limitation on the scope of the license then copyright law could not be invoked for automaticly tipping the balance of harms towards Sun.
The 9th Circuit said very clearly:"the determination of whether or not Sun is entitled to a presumption of irreparable harm may not end the matter, for even if Sun is not entitled to the presumption, it may still be able to demonstrate that an injunction is warranted under the traditional standard for preliminary injunctions"
Indeed on remand that is exactly what happened, which is too bad, because it's as clear as the nose on my face that the compatibility requirement limited the scope of authorized modifications to Sun's code.
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Congratulations, Lawmeme (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Monday, February 24 @ 10:18:23 EST | It's a right of passage for a web site when it becomes important enough to attract Microsoft astroturfers. Good job!
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Re: Microsoft Takes Offensive in Sun Case (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Tuesday, February 25 @ 19:16:10 EST | Okay, so justice delayed is justice denied. Guess M.S. hasn't ever tried the same tactic with various levels of success? Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Two anti-trust actions later M.S. is still using it's monopoly to push inferior products and destroy competitors. Unfortunately, even if you're correct in all your beliefs I just can't find any tears to shed for poor abused M.S. |
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