Re: vendor collaboration [Re: Smalltalk for Web development?]

<opinion>
The irony in this whole thread is that:

Microsoft ostensibly "creates an OS Monopoly" so they are bad because they
are stifling competition and innovation and DOJ is doing the right thing.

Sun creates Java and the world is a better place for all. We have panacea
and a silver bullet for technological and related business woes.

Microsoft creates .NET. It is subsequently characterized by many as being
(perhaps even soley) intended as an attack on Sun and Java. Microsoft is
bad/evil because in developing .NET it represents innovation and competition
to Java. I.e., Microsoft should not be allowed to threaten Sun's control,
direction, and ownership of the Java ship of state. That, dare I say,
effective "monopolistic" control over Java should remain with good Sun and
bad Microsoft should be discouraged and if possible restricted. Thank the
stars that all things Java are so good...

So remind me again, how is Sun's management of the Java
platform/language/framework/components/services really different than
Microsoft's management of the Windows
platform/API's/frameworks/components/services(applications)?

Hmmm,
Is it that Microsoft has been more fortunate and successful in promoting
their goods and services to the point that they are perceived as threatening
the greater economy? And is it that the goods and products have they so
successfully promote also have commensurate problems that frustrate the heck
out the populous enough to garner politcal support for special business
interests that are competitive with Microsoft.

And is it that Sun's efforts at similar domination have not been viewed as
"threatening" to businesses in the large because Sun's products/services as
compared to Microsofts were not as well planned in the business development
cycles of the company and have left so much money on the table, still to be
had by all like a feeding frenzy of sharks; despite the fact that from a
competition and innovation viewpoint Java is at least as stifling to
industry growth and technical evolution to aid productivity and reduce
business costs and perhaps even improve user experience through better
resulting software designs?


Sure makes one have a lot of respect for levels of success achieved through
the various capabilities of all the players involved. They are all just
companies. Business is business, some guys are perhaps better than others
based on one's personal criteria but at the end of the day it is an economic
system we're talking about not a social system (society focused priorities).

</opinion>

Gosh, I sound like I'm making some kind of a case for Microsoft. How the
heck did I end up there?

-- Dave Simmons [www.qks.com / www.smallscript.com]
  "Effectively solving a problem begins with how you express it."

"David Simmons" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:jpfV5.484991$[hidden email]... can't to
> develop support for Smalltalk on .NET. I find that there is ONE giant
> difference between the Sun JVM and the Microsoft .NET VM philosophy.
Which date.
> They did not make the cut for the initial design because Microsoft, who is
> very good with product schedules, had lockdown dates at which they had to
> begin freezing v1 features. More than anything else, this single factor
> precluded availability of resources and facility to add some key features
to
> v1 that would make a big difference for dynamically bound language
> implementation on .NET. Compared to trying to build a portable (non JNI)
> support library for dynamic languages on JVM, the issues are night and
day.
>
> I.e., IMHO Sun, on the other hand, could give a damn about other languages
> because they are promoting Java and their ownership of it as a language
> therefore their VM model is Java-bounded (effectively rigid/closed) and
they
> have never made an effort to ensure it could portably support other
> languages. One might conclude they even discourage it, since they have had
> (Smalltalk technology via HotSpot, Self, etc) and know what technical
> changes might be needed to support a broader range of languages. However,
to
> do so would be in direct conflict with the essence of Sun's vision for
Java
> (one language for all; in the competitive business spririt of course).
>
> In reality, I attribute most of the problems I have with Java and its VM
> issues not too well planned aggessive business tactics, but rather to
> limited technical breadth and vision among the controlling (politics in
Sun)
> personalities who drove/drive the technical and corresponding business
model
> for Sun's Java vision.
>
> The problem fostered by Sun begins with a design flaw that the language is
> what is important for portability. Microsoft took the approach that the VM
> was what was important for portability and ubiquitous functionality.
Either
> approach allows the option for the respective companies involved to
control
> and/or create proprietary elements that are challenging to produce in
clean
> room form.
>
> Technically speaking, the .NET platform is a giant leap forward over the
> JVM. The .NET platform changes the problem from one of enabling a
languages
> portability to one of enabling an executables portability. There is a lot
> more well designed technology and capability in the architecture of .NET
> than there is in the relatively crippled JVM architecture. Which is to
> Microsoft's advantage, of course, since it raises the bar significantly on
> producing a clean room .NET platform.
>
> So to make sure everyone reads between the lines on my comments, I'm have
no
> beliefs or desires regarding defending either companies business
practices.
> But I am telling you that from a technical point of view, .NET is a
superior
> architecture (implementation may be another thing, time will tell). As to
my
> naivette in trusting Microsoft to hold the keys to the core VM technology
of
> the future of my work, SmallScript, it should be obvious that I'm not. It
> has been and will remain the case for the forseeable future that QKS own
AOS
> VM platform is the reference VM for SmallScript and QKS Smalltalk, and
that
> Microsoft's .NET platform is just a valuable and supported alternative
> platform.
>
> IMHO
> ----
> As to a plot by Microsoft to "crush" Java as some parties have indicated,
I
> would simply call that a naive Java centric (paranoid Java advocates) view
> because it really suggests a far too narrow focus for Microsoft's vision.
I
> would have suggested that Microsoft and the .NET vision was operating on a
> much grander business scale than just targetting Java ;-).
>
> If you observe C#, which the pundits at large claim is the Java clone, one
> finds that within Microsoft's .NET focus and usage today DOES NOT treat C#
> as a centerstage element but rather just one of many many key elements to
> the grander picture. C# was perhaps one of the most essential elements in
> the bootstrapping up of the .NET platform because it was the language that
> emodied and evolved with the VM object model and was thus the first
language
> that could make use of and test out all the functionality. Keeping in mind
> that the MS.NET architecture is focused on compiled element portability
> (abstracted from source language), C# was important to create the
frameworks
> that go into what I believe forms the true value and essence of .NET as a
> Microsoft strategy.
>
> In fact, now that they have so many other languages supporting the .NET
VM,
> they are working to defocus away from C# because as explained by the
thesis
> in the previous paragraph it is not really an essential element to the big
> picture of .NET. As an aside, it is my understanding is that there will be
a
> Java for .NET and that it is a third party producing it. I believe that
the

David Simmons <[hidden email]> said:
>Microsoft ostensibly "creates an OS Monopoly" so they are bad because they
>are stifling competition and innovation and DOJ is doing the right thing.
>
>Sun creates Java and the world is a better place for all. We have panacea
>and a silver bullet for technological and related business woes.
>
Technology aside, a couple of differences:

- If you look at the actual business practices for the last 15 years or
so, it should be clear that Microsoft is an outlier and has not many big
friends left in the industry (for good reasons). What I don't understand
is that people, especially those from small companies, still partner with
them. Most of the time you're eaten alive, your technology is literally
assimilated into the gigantic heap of bad-quality source code lying around
in Redmond (been there, seen the crap, didn't buy a T-shirt), and chances
are big that a team of MS juniors take over your project and seriously
mess it up. My conclusion: all you people from small companies eager to
help MS are either stupid or just in it for the money. In both cases,
best of luck.  
- Contrary to any Microsoft technology, I can download the source code
to the Java platform and compile it on any platform that competes with
Sun's own offerings. Sure, it was the only way to spread Java, but for
the people on the receiving end that's been quite a good deal. Sun is
actively supporting open source, even under the GNU public license -
I'd be very surprised if MS ever takes such a step (Sun donated RPC,
NFS, NIS to the public a decode before the term Open Source was even
invented).

Sun and MS both are public companies that are there to give their
shareholders a good profit, sure. But I've worked with both, and my
conclusion is that at Sun, there are lots of techies high in the hierarchy
with their heart at the right place that help to give the company a bit
of a conscience - I never noticed such a thing at MS. I think that
this is an important difference.

Now, as neither shop seems to offer Smalltalk solutions, let's get back on
track, shall we?
--
Cees de Groot               http://www.cdegroot.com     <[hidden email]>
GnuPG 1024D/E0989E8B 0016 F679 F38D 5946 4ECD  1986 F303 937F E098 9E8B

[hidden email] (Cees de Groot) wrote:

>Sun and MS both are public companies that are there to give their
>shareholders a good profit, sure. But I've worked with both, and my
>conclusion is that at Sun, there are lots of techies high in the hierarchy
>with their heart at the right place that help to give the company a bit
>of a conscience - I never noticed such a thing at MS. I think that
>this is an important difference.
>
>Now, as neither shop seems to offer Smalltalk solutions, let's get back on
>track, shall we?

Sun's VM is absolutely horrible at running Smalltalk, and where as Microsoft
is claiming to provide a reasonably efficient implmentation of a VM that can
support Smalltalk, I think, indirectly, Microsoft is offering Smalltalk
solutions.

The only thing Sun seems to be offering at the moment, is promoting one
horribly designed language:  Java.  Thanks, but no thanks.

Ian

"Cees de Groot" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:906d22$qo7$[hidden email]...
> David Simmons <[hidden email]> said:
> >Microsoft ostensibly "creates an OS Monopoly" so they are bad because
they
Ok, I hear you. However, in my limited experience, I know a number, not so
large, of companies small to mid-size who work with Microsoft and are not
encountering those problems. But that is in more recent times. I know that
there must be many companies/business that Microsoft (and many other big
Software companies) squished  "crawling" up the hill to the top and
continuing to try to stay there.

There are also equally many or more companies who were "made" by Microsoft's
actions, that doesn't help me to judge one as morally/ethically better or
better overall for the long term health of the industry. Certainly some of
Microsoft's actions have been malicious, but I'd be willing to bet that in
most cases companies are crushed simply by their own problems compounded
with the cost of being involved in a partnership dance or by sheer accident
for being to near the giant elephant that didn't seem them.

I am intimately aware of numerous events where Apple (even with best of
individual people's good intentions), more so than Microsoft has been just
devastating for small companies. In the Mac tools market alone, Apple
managed to principally assist in the demise of ten companies out of a group
of fifteen competing companies in just two years (Sun was in the sidelines
playing a helping hand to make it worse). Most of those companies had been
in business for at least 3 years prior to Apple's actions and doing just
fine.

I dealt a great deal with Sun in the 80's and they are no saints, just a
business like the rest playing in the cutthroat hi-stakes technology game.
What I can't really fathom is why everyone thinks these other Microsoft
competitor companies are such good guys; I can easily understand why people
recognize Microsoft as a problem.

As to Microsoft and the risk for QKS, I learned some incredibly costly and
painful lessons about surviving after being misused by Apple behavior.
Microsoft has, at least over seven or so years of business interaction with
them, had the virtue that they didn't mislead me up front about how we might
get used (of course you have to be smart enough to ask the right questions
but that is always your responsibility in any business deal).

Microsoft doesn't own or get any of the technology developed by QKS. What
they get is a third party whose worked with them at Microsoft's expense to
explore their technology and they have been given substantive feedback to
ensure the technology was useful to that third party and others like it.
They also got a third party who felt that both got mutual benefit by the
third party creating a Smalltalk technology for .NET with ongoing Microsoft
support.

This general category of "donated" items are things that were developed in
relation to DOD/DARPA projects and much of the work took place under grants
that required this kind of availability. Let's not go giving Sun too much
credit, the military industrial funding complex did far more to make all
this happen.

Sun, like Oracle for example generated a significant portion of their growth
revenue by government contracts (tax funded money); and significant other
portions came from academia and research and engineering labs & facilities.
Most of those groups I just mentioned fit a different profile in terms of
decision accountability and profitability vis-a-vis Microsoft's typical
client profile.

>
> Sun and MS both are public companies that are there to give their
> shareholders a good profit, sure. But I've worked with both, and my
> conclusion is that at Sun, there are lots of techies high in the hierarchy
> with their heart at the right place that help to give the company a bit
> of a conscience - I never noticed such a thing at MS. I think that
> this is an important difference.

I know a reasonable spectrum of people at MS. I would characterize almost
all of them as also having their goals, motivations, and hearts in the right
places. The problem is not usually among the technical crowd, as in almost
any of the software organizations around. It is in the corporate culture
that one begins to see the real issues that drive the company behavior. It
is almost always among the management and business folks where the problems
begin that most people are citing in this thread.

As to Sun, my experience and knowledge is that they have incredible turf and
teritoriality issues which leads to unfortunate things (like the inability
of Java to acknowledge Smalltalk or JVM being unable to support it). As to
open source, Sun is in the unix community as a top tier leader, Linux has
been continually forcing their hand...  I was actively involved with
management among some of the key Linux distributions for most of last year
and Sun was not playing nice, but then neither were the Linux distributors
even amongst themselves.

Sun was not playing the open source give what we have away under some quasi
open-source license game before linux came of age. But under Linux's steady
pressure they have been forced to yield up to the market pressures created
by linux and a subsequently generated surge of general open-source events.

It is worth noting that Sun is also a hardware systems company, so unlike
Microsoft, their mission is to sell systems. Thus, giving away the software
to make that happen is a key strategy for the business model. That's a big
part of their need to manage the Java ship-of-state, so they can remain the
prime choice branded provider of a (according to public fad/market presence)
prime choice (Java) internet technology enabler. If I give Sun benefit of
the doubt and just assume well intentioned mistakes, and assume the worst
about Microsoft, that doesn't make the end results (industry impact) of
their actions particularly more palatable.

>
> Now, as neither shop seems to offer Smalltalk solutions, let's get back on
> track, shall we?

I never left the Smalltalk track, this discussion stemmed from talking about
my work on enabling Smalltalk for Microsoft's .NET platform. Sorry for
otherwise leading us astray, but I did tag my comments with <opinion/> :-)

> --
> Cees de Groot               http://www.cdegroot.com     <[hidden email]>
> GnuPG 1024D/E0989E8B 0016 F679 F38D 5946 4ECD  1986 F303 937F E098 9E8B


-- Dave Simmons [www.qks.com / www.smallscript.com]
  "Effectively solving a problem begins with how you express it."

David Simmons <[hidden email]> said:
>I never left the Smalltalk track, this discussion stemmed from talking about
>my work on enabling Smalltalk for Microsoft's .NET platform. Sorry for
>otherwise leading us astray, but I did tag my comments with <opinion/> :-)
>

I'm just wondering about how my innocent question no Web development with
Smalltalk got into YetAnotherSunVersusMicrosoft thread.

And I am still looking for the holy grail of Web development (Zope combined
with Smalltalk, anyone?) ;-)


--
Cees de Groot               http://www.cdegroot.com     <[hidden email]>
GnuPG 1024D/E0989E8B 0016 F679 F38D 5946 4ECD  1986 F303 937F E098 9E8B

Look at the VW plugin and VisualWave


Cees de Groot wrote:
--
James A. Robertson
Technical Product Manager (Smalltalk), Cincom
[hidden email]

<Talk Small and Carry a Big Class Library>

[hidden email] (Cees de Groot) wrote:

Hold your horses.  :-)

Ian

[hidden email] (Cees de Groot) wrote:

Actually.. To be a bit more serious, if you read back to one of my messages
in this thread where I said something along the lines of "The Smalltalk
third-party framework market mostly stinks at the moment"   There is your
answer.  Until this changes, either .NET takes of with Smalltalk, or until
Smalltalk vendors collaborate more -- I don't think we're gonna see hardly
any new third-party Smalltalk frameworks -- be it commercial or free.  The
current culture surrounding many of the existing Smalltalk vendors does
absolutely nothing to stimulate the third-party frameworks growth -- and
they are doing it to themselves.  The culture for third-party framework
growth has been much better in the past!  This has got nothing to do with
the language itself, only the vendors and how things are marketed.

Ian

James A. Robertson <[hidden email]> said:
>Look at the VW plugin and VisualWave
>
I am looking, rest assured :-). Squeak/Comanche is another one on the
candidate list, but it seems this project is a bit in hibernation (I do
like it, though - the combo of publishing objects and providing a "server
pages" implementations counts for me as proven technolgoy).

--
Cees de Groot               http://www.cdegroot.com     <[hidden email]>
GnuPG 1024D/E0989E8B 0016 F679 F38D 5946 4ECD  1986 F303 937F E098 9E8B

"David Simmons" <[hidden email]> writes:

The point about Sun/Java vs MS/.NET is very simple.

<repeat while="not understood">

Sun have always been a supporter of open systems, allowing easy
porting of software and the implementation of standard systems.

Even when sun design a processor (SPARC) the release the specs and
allow others to licence it.

Java can be implemented by anyone and does not contain hooks to
bind you to any one supplier or platform.

Almost everything Microsoft introduces ties you to the Windows platform,
so reducing your freedom of choice.

Microsoft generally operate closed systems, which use undocumented
APIs and protcols.  When they implement standards they usually
add proprietary extensions and hooks to bind you to their systems.
They have tried this with HTML, XML and Java.

</repeat>

How could this be clearer?

Steve Zara

A SERFer wrote:
>
> "David Simmons" <[hidden email]> writes:
>

> >
> >Gosh, I sound like I'm making some kind of a case for Microsoft. How the
> >heck did I end up there?
>

The mistake is having the idea that Sun does this for altruistic
reasons.  They do it because MS has beaten them in the market so badly.
If the shoe were to reverse itself, you would see Sun start to rapidly
lose interest in open systems.


--
James A. Robertson
Technical Product Manager (Smalltalk), Cincom
[hidden email]

<Talk Small and Carry a Big Class Library>

[hidden email] (A SERFer) wrote in <[hidden email]>:

>When they implement standards they usually
>add proprietary extensions and hooks to bind you to their systems.
>They have tried this with HTML, XML and Java.
>

Actually, M$ isn't always the worst here.

Netscape were far worse that M$ in the early days of Netscape and IE.
<blink>, anyone? (and other, non-documented, proprietary, Netscape tags).

And not very many years ago, anyone who tried getting enough information
to port a (non-Solaris) OS to Sun would have found their "openness" didn't
stretch too far.

The joke in the company I then worked for was Sun's open systems were
"freedom to open your wallet"...

I'm with James:

>If the shoe were to reverse itself, you would see Sun start to rapidly
>lose interest in open systems.

P.

"James A. Robertson" <[hidden email]> writes:

I'm sorry, but that is just total nonsense.  Sun have been strong
a supporter of open systems since they were a very small startup company.
I did not say it was for altruistic reasons!  It was, of course, a
business decision, and, considering Sun's phenomenal growth, and the
increasing dominance of open systems in the 1990, a wise one.

Sun were using and promoting open systems long before they were fashionable
and successful.

Also, in exactly what market have MS beaten sun?  The internet runs largely
(and increasingly) on UNIX.  Which UNIX dominates this section?  Solaris.
I'm not entirely sure this is healthy : I would prefer a wider range of
Unixes, else Sun could well have excessive leverage (Although the grown
of Linux is helping here).  

Steve

> I'm sorry, but that is just total nonsense.  Sun have been strong
> a supporter of open systems since they were a very small startup company.
> I did not say it was for altruistic reasons!  It was, of course, a
> business decision, and, considering Sun's phenomenal growth, and the
> increasing dominance of open systems in the 1990, a wise one.
>
> Sun were using and promoting open systems long before they were
fashionable
> and successful.
>
Open systems have always been fashionable, but they have never been
successful (until Linux I suppose).

Sun, IBM, HP and all the rest of the Unix vendors have bleated on about
"open" systems for 20 years but never settled on anything. Why? Because they
all want their own proprietary technologies to become "standards", just like
everyone else.

How about Quality? Now that would be nice to see for a change instead of the
BS marketing and "strategic" sales tactics of these companies. Who are their
customers? Fortune 1000? How do you sell into those companies? Not with a
quality product, but by targeting senior management and FUDding the shit out
of the competition.

I hate to say it, but Microsoft has done more to impose quality software on
the market than any other vendor. They got into big companies without
thousands of sales droids; that has to be a good thing. What they've done
with their resulting power is another issue.

What does this have to do with Smalltalk? I forget.

Cheers,
Steve

[hidden email] (Paul Hudson) writes:

>[hidden email] (A SERFer) wrote in <[hidden email]>:
>
>>When they implement standards they usually
>>add proprietary extensions and hooks to bind you to their systems.
>>They have tried this with HTML, XML and Java.
>>
>
>Actually, M$ isn't always the worst here.

Did I say they were?

>
>Netscape were far worse that M$ in the early days of Netscape and IE.
><blink>, anyone? (and other, non-documented, proprietary, Netscape tags).
>
>And not very many years ago, anyone who tried getting enough information
>to port a (non-Solaris) OS to Sun would have found their "openness" didn't
>stretch too far.

So its what is easier...

to port from one UNIX to another (e.g. to and from Solaris)
or to port from Win32 to anything else?
 
>
>The joke in the company I then worked for was Sun's open systems were
>"freedom to open your wallet"...
>
>I'm with James:
>
>>If the shoe were to reverse itself, you would see Sun start to rapidly
>>lose interest in open systems.

As I replied to James, this comment shows a serious lack of knowledge of
computing history. Although perhaps, as James has shown that he obviously has an
unparalleled understanding of the US and European legal systems, and
of monopoly law, so I would not be surprised if he had deep inside
knowledge of Sun Microsystems which has revealed to him that Sun were
willing to dump their 20 year old strategy of supporting Unix and
open systems.

I really can't understand this debate:  All I'm basing my opinions on
is the actual history over at least 20 years of the companies concerned.
I'm not saying Sun or good or MS are bad.  All i'm doing is reporting what
they have done.

There seems to be an attitude here that because Smalltalk is threatened
by Java, that Java must be somehow 'bad', and Sun must rank as yet another
'evil empire' for releasing it.  Yet, the slightest glimmer of hope for
Smalltalk (via .NET) and there is a willingess to 'jump into bed' with
one of the most predatory companies: Microsoft.

Stop rubbishing Java, or trying to rely on Microsoft!
Smalltalk should be able to stand on its own.

Steve
>
>P.

"Steve Wart" <[hidden email]> writes:

Er... what?
So I suppose you would not call systems such as posix, X11, TCP/IP, etc.
'not successful'?????

Of course vendors have been adding their own extensions, and that has been
a problem, but to call open systems 'unsuccessful' is to show a fundamental
lack of knowledge of the computing industry and its history.
If you think Microsoft has imposed 'quality software' on the market you
obviously have a very strange definition of the word 'quality'!

>
>What does this have to do with Smalltalk? I forget.
>
>Cheers,
>Steve
>
>
And I forget why I'm bothering to reply to posts that are based on
wishful thinking and ignorance about the computing industry!

I think I'll stop posting here and get on with actual coding for a while :)

Steve

[hidden email] (A SERFer) wrote in <[hidden email]>:

>Also, in exactly what market have MS beaten sun?  The internet runs
>largely (and increasingly) on UNIX.  Which UNIX dominates this section?
>Solaris. I'm not entirely sure this is healthy : I would prefer a wider
>range of Unixes, else Sun could well have excessive leverage (Although
>the grown of Linux is helping here).  
>

The internet isn't (yet) everything.

Also, M$ beat Sun on the desktop. Sun 3/50 (etc), Solaris/86, OpenWindows
were all attempts to extend the Sun range into the desktop. M$
indisputedly beat them there.

In the server market, Windows NT (and now 2000) made a serious dent in
UNIX's market share. I don't think they beat Sun there, but they sure got
them worried.

P. (who agrees the growth of Linux there is a good thing for customers).

[hidden email] (A SERFer) wrote in <[hidden email]>:

>>Actually, M$ isn't always the worst here.

>Did I say they were?

I took your comments to suggest that "past performance is a guide to the
future" (as the financial services ads here in the UK are careful not to
say :-), and so felt it useful to point out that M$ aren't always the
black hats...

>As I replied to James, this comment shows a serious lack of knowledge of
>computing history. Although perhaps, as James has shown that he
>obviously has an unparalleled understanding of the US and European legal
>systems, and of monopoly law, so I would not be surprised if he had deep
>inside knowledge of Sun Microsystems which has revealed to him that Sun
>were willing to dump their 20 year old strategy of supporting Unix and
open systems.

X/OPEN, anyone? All UNIX vendors (and Sun was no exception) were playing
the proprietary extension card there....

We could play games about who has the most experience of the history, but
I've been places where we tried to get information out of Sun, and open,
they were not. They've behaved better with Java.

>I really can't understand this debate:  All I'm basing my opinions on
>is the actual history over at least 20 years of the companies concerned.
>I'm not saying Sun or good or MS are bad.  All i'm doing is reporting
>what they have done.

_and_ arguing that that's the end of the argument.

><repeat while="not understood">

Prrof by repetition is not proof. We understand your argument. We (or at
least I), just don't agree with the conclusion.

P.

[hidden email] (A SERFer) wrote in <[hidden email]>:

>>with their resulting power is another issue.
>
>If you think Microsoft has imposed 'quality software' on the market you
>obviously have a very strange definition of the word 'quality'!

How about the conventional "Fitness for purpose"?

Windows software largely does what I want it to. I'd prefer it didn't
crash as often as it did (although - apart from Win98 - most M$ software I
use today isn't too bad), but largely I can get the software I want to do
what I want at a reasonable price.

It's quality software to me.

P.

...snip...

<VERY-POLITICAL><HYPERBOLE ENABLED>

>
> <repeat while="not understood">
>
> Sun have always been a supporter of open systems, allowing easy
> porting of software and the implementation of standard systems.

Sun supporting them or not, such things are not in and of themselves the
foundation for being a "good (in some subjective value system)" company.

First you need to really examine the pro's and con's of "open-systems" to an
economy and a society. Once you balance their value tradeoffs you next have
to examine what you really believe history shows about collaboratively
developed standards being the best and primary means of producing the
key/important technological advances.

Back to Sun, let's not forget that, if we took your thesis of their being an
"open systems" supporter as being true (which itself bears detailed
examination for the real purposes), we find that it is, for a hardware and
systems provider like Sun (quite a different type of goods/business from
what Microsoft sells), an established key requirement to foster growth and
sales. Especially sales to the government and academia (requiring bidding
and multi-source vendors) who were the ground from whence Sun sprang...

As to Sun, therefore not excercising bad practices like Microsoft, but only
good practices...

I guess that's why, when Smalltalk was on the rise in 94-95 and really hot
and was the prime contender for today's Java space, that Sun decided to
promote Java and "strangely" gave no technical credit to its evolution or
related Smalltalk and similar language foundations. They just claimed to
have invented it all themselves.

I guess since they did invent this stuff (VM's, GC, etc) all themselves
that's why they still make a concerted effort not to recognize Smalltalk in
their literature (even though much less closely related languages like C++
have given reasonably important recognition in their literature). Heck,
there are more references to Smalltalk in the Microsoft MSDN technical
libraries for Win32 than one can find in all the Java literature from Sun.

>
> Even when sun design a processor (SPARC) the release the specs and
> allow others to licence it.

That's because they needed to grow their very expensive niche market to
establish sufficient volume and convince potential customers of their
viability. If you examine the era in which they made these decisions and
look at the competing technologies you'll see most did not survive.

>
> Java can be implemented by anyone and does not contain hooks to
> bind you to any one supplier or platform.

No, you can't implement the all imporant frameworks without a license. Hence
the term "clean-room" Java. If Sun were truly so open, that term would not
exist and certainly would not be considered perjorative in the same sentence
with Sun.

A clean room java is relatively useless without Sun's proprietary controlled
and Sun business centric frameworks. And, Sun has made sure that on the
hi-volume platforms they provide a sufficiently performing version to
prevent any self supporting financial/business basis for any such
competition.

>
> Almost everything Microsoft introduces ties you to the Windows platform,
> so reducing your freedom of choice.

Actually, a large part of all software produced and used in the World is on
Windows based systems. What are we really saying?

This integration allows continuous leveraging of existing facilities; which
promotes more available of solutions (although Microsoft themselves provide
too many of those solutions -- limiting free market behavior). It is
intrinsically what makes window's the most valuable platform for most usage
today.

>
> Microsoft generally operate closed systems, which use undocumented
> APIs and protcols.

Which, practically speaking is a real problem how?  For their really big and
important customers, one can obtain source and support for almost anything.
For most purposes on the system, in my experience on many such systems,
source or documentation on internal API's and protocols is not needed.

The problems have to do with bugs in deployed systems costing large sums of
maintenance and support costs.

And for both Sun and Microsoft, independent of whether one has
source/documentation or not, it has much, much, more to do with poorly
designed frameworks and architectures that one cannot change.  Witness what
really happened when Microsoft worked to FIX problems in Java's UI
facilities so they were at least acceptably functional (which is how the
whole crap between Sun and Microsoft REALLY began over Java).


> When they implement standards they usually
> add proprietary extensions and hooks to bind you to their systems.

That is one way to look at it. Another would be that they are trying to
expose the unique and valuable features that their systems have which may or
may not be in other systems. I.e., trying to avoid the lowest common
denominator form of standard -- which is a typical problem with standards
that try to satisfy everyone.  Microsoft has been driving XML, and without
Microsoft and IE the HTML and Netscape "standard" would never have moved
along as quickly or evolved as well. Competition here is good, standards
should be based on pragmatics and meeting real problems, balanced with the
need to foster interoperability and competitive implementations (that
themselves add unique value).

> They have tried this with HTML, XML and Java.

That's mostly a paranoid view of Microsoft, viewed in a narrow Microsoft
represents the cause/focus/epitome of bad things in today's software world.
Microsoft is a prime provider of desktop systems and solutions and as a
result almost everyone at some point in time (sometimes daily) has
encountered their products and found problems and issues.

As I've said in other posts it is not that Microsoft is any better or worse,
it is that Microsoft is the dominant player in the desktop space and this
leads to very limited competition in some key software arena's; which I view
to be a very bad thing for the health of the industry.

In my same view, Sun is doing equally bad and stifling things in the
language and software engineering arena with Java.

Perhaps the answer to you claims about "HTML, XML and Java" is more that
Microsoft is arrogant and when they perceived deficiencies in those
standards they simply extended/revised them to address the deficiencies they
found. However necessarily "flawed" and "limited" their technical and
business focus was in doing so.

Certainly the actual act of Microsoft working with those standards made them
much more important and drove them along much faster, and probably better,
than they would have otherwise.

A Microsoft lack of "co-operation" could be viewed as (proprietary
extensions and hooks to bind you to their systems) what you're describing.

OTOH, almost NO vendor wants to assist another in getting an upper hand,
especially when that vendor is the clear and dominant market leader who you
are struggling to compete with (i.e., Sun's view of MS).

So, in that kind of a business-competitive political situation how were Sun
and Microsoft (wrt Java) going to do anything other than stall a standards
process until they had the implementations ready; and if they could reach
such a point, how were they going to agree on whose implementation would win
(since both would likely have problems and certainly be incompatible).

>
> </repeat>
>
> How could this be clearer?

By examining this in a broader more balanced view context... ;-)

You're trying to convince that Sun is good (in an almost zealous way). I'm
saying that neither is good or bad. They are just businesses selling rather
different types of goods and services and each needs to be critically viewed
within their spheres of control, impact and influence. To me the DOJ problem
is that it is too muddled with emotional/political views driven by an
anti-Microsoft competitor consortium (who promote/foster such views you're
expressing).

It does not, and perhaps the U.S. law does not allow, analyzing (in
perspective) ALL the key technology dominating companies from the point of
view of really balancing the greater health-of/good-for the software
industry and their enormous subsequent impact on domestic and global
economies and overall social phenomenon.

But we operate in a free market economy which is frequently governed in the
U.S. by political considerations (often affected by propaganda campaigns)
and special interest money. Sun brought Java to the top of ladder
fundamentally through an amazing propaganda marketing campaign and has been
working like crazy ever since to make it real (come together) and rewrite
history to support the thesis that they had the one true vision, plan, and
technology from the beginning.

>
> Steve Zara

</HYPERBOLE ENABLED></VERY-POLITICAL>

I apologize in advance on this one Steve. I'm sure you'll want to respond
and I'm copping out early and telling you I won't be continuing with
responses because I haven't the emotional energy or time to engage in these
debates. Especially when I'm not in a real position to make a difference.
Whereas, time spent on other areas, really can make a difference.

Best Regards,

-- Dave Simmons [www.qks.com / www.smallscript.com]
  "Effectively solving a problem begins with how you express it."