Thank you for the history. A thought occurred to me the other
day.
When Microsoft was hawking J++ as part of its embrace, extend,
and extinguish
strategy to fight the perceived threat of java to their desktop
monopoly, they
had to settle because they were losing, as I recall. I also recall
that Sun's
real Ace in the Hole was the java trademark and the contract
Microsoft signed
in order to have its own jvm. With the support found here for
the notion that
clean-room implementation of the package, class, and method
names and
signatures is non-infringing, I'd have to say Microsoft's mistake was
in
signing a contract with Sun. Back in those days, 1999 or so, I was
just a
guy learning java. (I had started, ironically, by buying J++. Clearly I had
the
naiveté that would suggest a much younger person. Fortunately I moved to
the
real thing, got introduced to Linux and FreeBSD in the process, and left
Windows. A good ending to the story.) All I knew of Sun v.
Microsoft was from
ZDNet. If I got anything right about the history, it's a happy
accident. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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