Microsoft's Grip On Java Language Sparks Sun's High-Profile Lawsuit

SUN MICROSYSTEMS says its programming language is being morphed in the interest of World Wide Web domination.

Motivating Sun Microsystems' lawsuit against Microsoft yesterday is the issue of who will control what many see as the next big advance in computing - Java, a programming language seen as the key to preventing Microsoft's dominance of the World Wide Web.

The lawsuit may become the most-watched computer-industry action since Apple Computer's 1988 suit against Microsoft for adopting Windows, an operating system with an interface that closely resembled the Apple Macintosh. Apple lost the lawsuit, which dragged on for five years as Windows continued to gain market share and eventual dominance of desktop computing.

Java was developed by Sun to allow creation of programs that are easily transmitted on the Internet and run on many kinds of computers.

Sun, which owns the rights to Java and has licensed it to Microsoft along with 116 other software developers including International Business Machines, is alleging that in Microsoft's new World Wide Web browser, Internet Explorer 4.0, the company is illegally co-opting and changing Java so that it only works on Windows computers and not rivals' machines.

Microsoft has defended its adoption of the Java language, saying that it first needs to make sure it works well with the Windows operating system and that Sun is just trying to keep control of a potentially lucrative product.

In terms of the immediate impact, the Sun lawsuit will not affect computer users or Internet surfers today. Java, used to animate parts of Web pages and provide pop-up applications such as calculators or user surveys, appears on fewer than 1 percent of Web pages and is still viewed as slow and underpowered. But many large companies are using Java extensively for adapting their data to the Web, and it is expected to gain momentum as it matures by 1999 or 2000.

For the time being, Sun seeks to halt Microsoft's implementation of Java in its new browser, released last Tuesday. More than 2 million copies of the program already have been distributed, Microsoft said.

"What happened today reminds me a lot of the Apple lawsuit," said Rich Levin, industry radio commentator and Information Week senior editor. "Microsoft enters into a contract that allows them to implement another company's technology, then extends that technology and gets sued. This thing is going to drag on for years." Like Windows then, Microsoft's Web browser, Internet Explorer, is on the rise today, gaining market share against Silicon Valley rival Netscape.

Next year, Internet Explorer will be built into Microsoft's Windows, meaning that everyone who buys a personal computer from that point on will in some way use Microsoft's browser. Analysts expect Microsoft to pull even with Netscape by this time next year.

The lawsuit could change Microsoft's march, however.

With the suit, Sun has threatened to withhold improvements to Java from Microsoft until the latter complies with what Sun says are the terms of its contract. Losing access to Java enhancements eventually could harm Microsoft's browser and give Netscape an advantage.

Sun's lawsuit, filed in San Jose federal court, escalates months of rhetoric between the high-tech foes. It also adds to the public scrutiny of Microsoft, which is the object of an ongoing Justice Department probe into whether the software company is unfairly monopolizing the market with its 80 percent share of all PC operating software.

Attorneys general in six states are also looking into whether Microsoft has an unfair advantage in the marketplace.

"The browser battle is changing fast," said Charles Fitzgerald, who manages a Java programming team at Microsoft. "Sun is relying on Netscape to deliver their flavor of technology," and therefore trying to protect Netscape with the lawsuit, Fitzgerald said.

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Sun, of Mountain View, Calif., seeks unspecified damages for Microsoft's alleged "efforts to undermine the value of Java and the Java brand." The goal of the suit, however, is "to get Microsoft back into compliance" with its Java contract, said Alan Baratz, president of JavaSoft, a Sun division. Some analysts took the statement to mean the case will be settled before reaching trial.

Microsoft, which said there was no validity to the claims, vowed it was preparing a "strong response" to the suit, encompassing the possibility of a countersuit.

The Java contract initially was negotiated nearly two years ago by Eric Schmidt, then chief technology officer of Sun, and Nathan Myhrvold, who headed advance technology for Microsoft. In feverish talks leading up to a sweeping Internet strategy announcement by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Dec. 7, 1995, the two companies reached a letter of agreement on Java. Three months later, the contract was finalized.

Sun's allies at the time, including numerous Netscape executives, opposed licensing Java to Microsoft on the assumption Microsoft would advance the technology to enhance Windows more than other computers such as the Macintosh and workstations using Unix.

Patrick Naughton, an executive at Starwave, founded by Paul Allen, had once headed the team at Sun that built what became Java. When he heard of the licensing, he commented, "It's over. Microsoft has won."

Naughton, now president at Starwave in Bellevue, said yesterday that the Sun suit was "inevitable." Sun had to protect its control of Java, he said. But Naughton, like others viewing the lawsuit, said it is difficult to determine whether Microsoft is in violation because terms of the contract have never been divulged.

"Everyone's in the dark except the two parties," he noted. Normally, the contract would be filed as evidence in Sun's suit, but the company asked that it be kept sealed by the court.

Sun charged Microsoft with two specific violations having to do with its Internet Explorer 4.0. Microsoft failed to ship two technologies, the Java Native Interface and Remote Method Invocation, with Internet Explorer 4.0, and instead substituted its own technologies, Sun charged. Microsoft said it is allowed by the contract to do so and that its technologies work better than Sun's.

Sun also charged Microsoft with "deceptively" making alterations to a package of Java development tools so that programs using Microsoft's Java would run only on Internet Explorer and not Netscape's browser.

"This is the meat of Sun's case," said Dwight Davis, editor of Windows Watcher newsletter in Redmond. "If Sun can back up that charge, Microsoft clearly has been devious."

Bill Joy, a top Sun programmer who helped to negotiate the Microsoft Java contract, compared the situation to a Burger King franchisee who sold pizza instead of hamburgers, or a jeans maker who put the Calvin Klein label on imported clothes.

Fitzgerald discounted the charge, calling it "FUD" - fear, uncertainty and doubt - an industry term referring to freezing markets and harming innovation by injecting confusion over emerging standards.

"They're making stuff up," he said. "That's the kind of thing we'll be responding to in detail."

This report contains material from the Associated Press.

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Dispute in a nutshell

The fight: The dispute between Sun Microsystems and Microsoft rests on a technical features in Microsoft's newly launched Version 4.0 of its Web browser, Internet Explorer. Sun contends that IE was constructed in a such a way that it gives Windows programs using the Java programming language an advantage over Macintosh and Unix computers. In order to make those programs work on IE, software developers would have to use Microsoft's programming tools. The larger fight: The guiding principle of Java is that programs developed in that language would be usable on all major computer platforms, Windows, Macintosh and Unix. If Java programs run best on Windows machines - and they probably would if they're created with Microsoft tools - the importance of that principle is lessened while the dominance of Windows increases.