Negotiations for the deals went through the night, according to Sun's Schwartz. The Dell agreement was signed at about 3 am on Wednesday; the HP agreement at 9 am. Schwartz, who predicted the partnerships last week, thanked HP employees in the JavaOne audience. "On behalf of the Java community, I want to let you know we appreciate the agreement your company and my company signed not two minutes ago to ship Java on all your PCs," he said. The response from Microsoft to the Dell and HP moves was not conciliatory. It reiterated its position that its removal of Java was triggered by lawsuits with Sun over the technology. "As part of Microsoft's January 2001 settlement agreement with Sun, Microsoft will no longer be authorised by Sun to support the Microsoft VM (Java virtual machine) after 2 January, 2004. Since Microsoft will not be permitted to provide ongoing support for the Microsoft JVM, including fixes and addressing security issues, we will stop including the Microsoft VM in new releases of Windows and other products to protect the reliability and security of Windows," the company said in a statement. The software giant licensed Java in 1996, but its Windows-only changes to the technology soon led to a legal battle with Sun. While the companies have settled that dispute, those Java changes are at the heart of an ongoing antitrust suit that Sun brought against Microsoft in 2002. Microsoft has embraced many of the ideas in Java in its C# programming language and its .Net software. The company indicated that it wouldn't make waves over the Dell and HP agreements. "Computer manufacturers have always been free to license software from third parties for preinstallation on their new machines," it said. The deals with Dell, HP and Apple are the beginning, Schwartz said in a statement. "We expect that many more PC (manufacturers) and large consumer-application providers will also begin distributing the latest Java Runtime Environment from Sun," he said. Schwartz now expects that Java applications will "flower once again on the desktop". One area for which he has high hopes is gaming: "Games will obviously be faster. Games will be smoother," he predicted in an interview. While Microsoft shipped Java for many years, it was a 1997 version that didn't support many newer features. Dell and HP will ship computers with the latest versions of Sun's Java, Sun said. Spreading Java widely is important, but Sun has technological challenges with Java as well. It's been notoriously slow to launch and has had a comparatively primitive interface. Sun reduced the time that it takes for Java to launch by 30 percent from version 1.4.0 to the soon-to-be-released 1.4.2, said Curtis Sasaki, vice president of desktop solutions. The new version also will add a look and feel that better matches Windows XP or the Gnome interface for Linux. The next major version of Java for desktop computers, 1.5 -- code-named "Tiger" -- will feature more refinements to grow closer to Windows XP and Linux, Sasaki said. Version 1.5 will also spread Java's support for the basic set of Web services standards, Sasaki said. Those standards will debut in the server version of Java 1.4, which will be released once the Web Services Basic standard is finalised. "As good as the move is, however, it's no guarantee for success -- it's merely a foot in the door," RedMonk analyst Stephen O'Grady said, adding that Sun and its partners now will have to focus on performance and programming tools. "But you can't build a house without a foundation, and this is the first step."
See the Hardware News Section for the latest update on everything from MP3 players and PDAs to supercomputing.
Let the editors know what you think in the Mailroom.
