Opinion: Did Java Get Jilted by Latest Appeals Court Ruling?
Appellate court finds that Microsoft may have misled programmers by not being upfront about Visual J++
by John Zukowski, Guest Columnist
August 1, 2001
hanks to the latest judicial ruling in the Microsoft Corp. case, it seems the world won't be getting a pair of Baby Bills any time soon. Between Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's perceived ethical problems in discussing the case with reporters prior to a final ruling, and the appellate court's ruling that Microsoft didn't try to monopolize the browser market, it looks like Microsoft will stay intact. Sure, the appeals court upheld that Microsoft holds a monopoly with its Windows operating system. And it also found that Microsoft violated the Sherman Antitrust Act in trying to crush the Netscape Navigator browser and subvert Sun Microsystems' Java technologies. But the necessary remedy isn't a breakup.
But that doesn't mean that there aren't significant issues raised by the decision that Java developers should be aware of. For starters, though the Sun vs. Microsoft case was settled for $20 million back in January, the federal antitrust case could actually open up Microsoft to a private antitrust lawsuit from Sun. However, despite the temptation of a potential windfall, I doubt a corp-to-corp antitrust lawsuit will happen, given the effort necessary to prove damages.
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John Zukowski is the founding Java guru of jGuru, served as About.com's Java expert and has written several books, the latest of which are Java Collections and The Definitive Guide to Swing for Java 2. He is an in-demand speaker around the world at Java conferences. He conducts strategic Java consulting with his own firm, JZ Ventures, and can be reached at jaz@zukowski.net.
hanks to the latest judicial ruling in the Microsoft Corp. case, it seems the world won't be getting a pair of Baby Bills any time soon. Between Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's perceived ethical problems in discussing the case with reporters prior to a final ruling, and the appellate court's ruling that Microsoft didn't try to monopolize the browser market, it looks like Microsoft will stay intact. Sure, the appeals court upheld that Microsoft holds a monopoly with its Windows operating system. And it also found that Microsoft violated the Sherman Antitrust Act in trying to crush the Netscape Navigator browser and subvert Sun Microsystems' Java technologies. But the necessary remedy isn't a breakup.
