Microsoft on Tuesday released the second beta of Visual J# .Net, a tool that will allow programmers to use the Java language to build software that works only on Microsoft's .Net technology.
However, Sun has raised concerns about Visual J# .Net in its recent private antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft. Microsoft says the Sun suit will have no impact on Visual J# .Net, though. "The Sun lawsuit doesn't affect the release of Visual J# .Net at all," said Tony Goodhew, Microsoft's product manager for the .Net Framework.
"There is no Sun intellectual property used in the product, nor do we make any claims that it will produce applications that pass any Sun tests or run on any Sun-licensed platform."
In the past three months, the open-source community has been given a wake-up call. Internet watchdogs have released the details of three widespread flaws in open-source applications usually shipped with the Linux operating system. The flaws could compromise the security of computers on which the applications are installed, prompting some developers to urge the open-source community to take another look at popular code. But most fear the majority of members won't bother.
"No one is doing auditing," said Crispin Cowan, chief scientist at Linux maker WireX Communications, one of several companies selling a version of the OS with additional security options. Cowan is the founder of Sardonix, a Web site aimed at organizing groups of people who want to review major open-source software. "Reviewing old code is tedious and boring and no one wants to do it," Cowan said.
A pricing disagreement between Oracle and some of its database software customers has IT analyst firm Meta Group urging customers not to pay the database software maker additional licensing fees.
The dispute relates to how Oracle charges its customers when they transfer large amounts of data, known as batch feeds, to the Oracle database. These batch feeds are commonly used by companies to set up data warehouses.
Meta said customers believed that all employees involved in sending the batch feeds were covered by a single license, but Oracle said policy changes in recent years mean that each individual needed his or her own license.
The judge in the Microsoft antitrust case refused Tuesday to allow testimony from one of the company's fiercest critics in support of penalties that nine states are seeking against the software company. After asking former Netscape chief executive James Barksdale to leave the courtroom, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said Barksdale could not speak authoritatively about whether penalties sought by the states would work better than those agreed to by the federal government.
"It's the court's conclusion to what's effective," Kollar-Kotelly said.
Microsoft Corp. sought in court on Tuesday to portray Sun Microsystems's Inc. Java programming language as a product threatened by its own shortcomings rather than any anti-competitive behavior by Microsoft.
Holley introduced another e-mail that indicated some Sun employees were fearful of Microsoft's .NET initiative, software being developed by Microsoft that is designed to deliver services over the Web. Green took exception to one in which a Sun employee reported that tests demonstrated that .NET was faster and more efficient than Java.
Precedent-setting hearings to determine whether Microsoft will face stricter antitrust remedies than those imposed by the company's proposed settlement with the US government kicked off yesterday in a Washington D.C federal courthouse. Squaring off against the software giant are nine US states--including California, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Utah and West Virginia--and the District of Columbia, which argued in court yesterday that Microsoft was still a bully, "like a heavy in a grade B movie." For its part, Microsoft says the more draconian measures requested by the states would help only its competitors, and not consumers.
Microsoft is shaking up its Mobility Group, swapping executives and changing the calendar under which software gets released in an effort to jump-start the company's push into handhelds and cell phones. Change has been a constant for the group since last October when the company released an upgrade of its Pocket PC 2002 handheld operating system. Around the same time, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer began to personally oversee the group. Since then, two other key executives have left the group.
Other changes involve scheduled updates to the Pocket PC operating system for handhelds and the Smartphone operating system for cell phones. Sources familiar with the company's plans say that upgrades to these operating systems will be synchronized with updates to Windows. Synchronizing the releases will allow Microsoft to more tightly integrate these products as well as better coordinate the overall marketing plan.
According to a report in the Washington Times, Microsoft's Redmond Campus is a potential terrorism target. The paper reported this weekend that US intelligence officials have determined that al Qaeda terrorists have picked economic targets in the US for a potential round of future attacks. This plan apparently involves various Seattle-area locations, including Microsoft's sprawling campus headquarters in Redmond, Washington, as well as Boeing, the US Navy's Bangor submarine base, and the Space Needle.
After almost a year of delays, AOL has taken the much anticipated first step to make Netscape's Gecko the default browsing engine in its client, a move that could breathe new life into the now stagnant browser war. As first revealed by BetaNews, AOL began developing the browser agnostic technology dubbed Komodo last year after an agreement with Microsoft sanctioning the use of Internet Explorer expired. The company has been testing Komodo with its CompuServe client since that time, but only this week made the switch in a test version of AOL, dubbed "Talon."
But Microsoft seems unconcerned that AOL might give IE the boot. Microsoft product manager Jim Cullinan told BetaNews last year, "AOL can use any browser technology they want in their client." After rumors surfaced last summer stating Netscape would focus more on services than its browser, Cullinan remarked, "Maybe it is because the Netscape technology sucks, at least that is what the reviews have said."
In hearings expected to last eight weeks, Microsoft will portray the states' demands as excessive and try to confine remedies to specific antitrust violations found at trial.
To ensure a competitive market for future software, the states are proposing that Microsoft sell a "modular" version of Windows that would allow computer makers to strip out add-on features like the Internet browser or the media player.
But Kollar-Kotelly has already expressed skepticism about the breadth of the states' argument, and has been receptive to Microsoft's contention that devices like hand held computers and media players should be excluded.