[antlr-interest] OFF-TOPIC: Re: Managed to compile under .Net !!

[micheal_jor]

This isn't the place for thrashing over all this again but my 2 bits:

> Oh - and when I said MS was behaving like a spoilt brat I wasn't
> thinking of the current legal spat - I was thinking of this one. It 
was
> ALWAYS an option open to MS to submit their JVM for testing, and if 
it
> had passed the compatibility tests it would have been fine to ship. 
But
> MS chose to drop the product, rather than fix those places where it
> failed the compatibility tests.

My memory may be a little suspect but, this whole issue was really 
about two plays:
(1) Sun's attempt to use the JVM as a channel for installing it's own 
proprietary middleware platform on all OS that ran a JVM - Windows in 
particular. This could have effectively killed off OSes as products.
(2) MS's attempt to thwart Sun's Java platform (not language) by 
separating the Java language from the Java platform.

> The whole point of the Sun lawsuit was that MS had licenced Sun 
code,
> and was using the Java trademark, and contrary to the terms of the
> contract was shipping a product that failed the compatibility tests.

MS's jvm was nevertheless recognized as the most compliant *at the 
time* (if you ignore the JNI/middleware-ish bits it chose not to 
implement).

Of course MS was guilty of polluting some of the inbuilt packages 
with platform-specific types/members.

> If MS had fixed the compatibility problem they would have been 
allowed to
> continue shipping updated JVMs.

All the while helping Sun to undermine the Windows platform?. There 
was talk then of including what became J2EE in the standard platform 
and using the intergration of Java with the Netscape browser as a 
delivery channel. What then happens to COM, MTS/COM+, MSMQ, IIS....

> If MS had chosen to abide by the
> contract then they could have shipped an updated JVM! THAT is why I 
said
> they were behaving like spoilt brats - they broke their side of the
> agreement, and when the other side complained they picked up their
> marbles and went home ...

I've read a lot of the text of the contract and depending on my 
political whims, the day of the week and whose lobbying me the 
hardest, either or both of Sun and MS could be right, wrong or both!.

Regardless of personal opinions of the events and the outcome, I'm 
just glad that Sun and MS's little splat over Java & Windows produced 
both J2SE/J2EE and .NET/Mono/dotGNU.

Cheers,

Micheal
ANTLR/C#


 

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