That was my point. When there's a lot of demand for it, Microsoft
will support it. That's why they're providing all the 97% packages
(those that appeal to the 97%). It's also why they won't support the
3% packages; RMI and JavaIDL.
The difference between this announcement and the previous ones is that
JFC is a 97% package. There's going to be a large backlash against
them for this.
The whole license issue is moot. MS will not let Sun dictate what APIs
they support. If Sun revokes the license, MS whips out their
cleanroom VM that they've had ready for a while in preparation (I'm
just guessing here, obviously). But MS *will* have to listen to their
customers, the 97%.
BTW, they're supporting Beans now - it's a 97% package.
>It may happen.
> They did, after all, give up on the notion of making MSN a closed
> competitor to the Internet with its own proprietary data formats, in
> favor of "embracing and extending" the emerging internet standards.
> However, the proprietary MSN/Blackbird model wasn't making very much
> money (by Microsoft standards at least) at the time it got cut off at
> the knees; whereas JavaBeans/JFC competes pretty directly for
> developer attention with technologies that are bringing money to
> Redmond by the bushel. That may mean a much harder fight.
If they were not going to support it, I thought that they'd leave
that announcement for a few more months. Netscape won't be delivering
it until well into Q4, so MS could have held off until they had
a larger share of the browser market, giving them more leverage.
This *may* have been a major (fatal?) mistake. I bet we see the spin
doctors out in full force shortly.
MB
-- Mark Baker, Ottawa Ontario CANADA. Java, CORBA, OpenDoc, Beans distobj@acm.org mbaker@nortel.ca http://www.iosphere.net/~markbToo many dinosaurs, too few meteors - Seyma Atik