Q: Did you, Scott, basically buy yourself a key to the inside of the hairball (McNealy's derisive term for Microsoft's proprietary software), or do we actually have some new openness that is going to make it easier for other companies?
McNealy: Where we use their intellectual property, there will be a royalty stream. Where they use ours, there will be a royalty stream back.
Ballmer: For guys like us, who have valuable intellectual property and a desire to provide jobs, it's not always just a question of what's available there to be integrated. It's really a question of, "is there appropriate compensation for the investment we've made?" We think, now, that we have a framework. Whereas it relates to Sun and StarOffice and Solaris and Java, we've got what's fair and proper, and Scott obviously thinks that he's got the same from us. Not only today, but it's a framework that goes out 10 years and gives us the ability to continue the cooperation.
Q: Scott, are you resolved that you can play on a level playing field? Are your competition concerns totally resolved by this?
McNealy: We think we've got a great relationship and a great opportunity, but we're going to have to go execute. The opportunity is all there. I feel very comfortable that this is a fair and just kind of relationship, around which we can do technology sharing.
Before, our engineers wouldn't get near each other, because, one, our legal folks would say, "Stay away." Secondly, the teams didn't know that there was a partnership opportunity, so they didn't trust each other. Now, we've got the framework, and we've got all the pieces. The doors are wide open, and the customer demand is massive. I think we've taken down all the roadblocks.
Q: Doesn't it seem as if you're looking out from the inside of the hairball now -- because you can interoperate, but there still aren't open standards?
McNealy: I can still play with open interfaces. It doesn't stop me from everything we do in making sure that those interfaces are open, multivendor and all the rest. It's just that when I need to interoperate with a Microsoft environment, I have a mechanism to try to make that happen.
