On Mar 19, 11:32 am, "amicus_curious" <[email protected]> wrote: > "Alexander Terekhov" <[email protected]> wrote in message > > news:[email protected]... > > > > > And how did that help SUN? > > The intent was to get the world's application developers creating all of > their work in java so that it could be "written once and run everywhere" in > an attempt to break the Microsoft grasp on the computer software market by > making Windows unnecessary. McNealy reasoned that by killing Microsoft's > cash cow, Gates would be unable to continue the battle for workstations and > department level servers. Java became very popular for system integrators > in designing client/server applications and might have someday done what > McNealy intended, but he had a poor sense of timing. > > The only real choice for client hardware at the time was the ubiquitous > Wintel PC, which did run a java environment just fine and so the standard > became a TCP/IP capable server, brand not important, working with a bunch of > Windows PCs, brand not important. All that did was to encourage big > companies to buy even more Windows based PCs which could now do additional > useful things. McNealy was planning to provide a so-called "thin client" > that would run the java applications, but he never got that out of the > chute, so the whole thing backfired. > > Microsoft, meanwhile, managed to thoroughly muddy the water by adding a lot > of their own interface cream and sugar to the original java black and then > managed to even create a sort of multi-flavor latte in the form of .NET. In > a sense, this out-did the original java, termed J++ in newspeak, and today > has totally blunted the original killing thrust attempt. > > At the end of the day, Sun had spent a fortune developing and promoting > java, creating a large opportunity for which it had no product to sell into. > And the COLA folk like to snicker at Bill Gates' leading with his chin! > > It could be said that the plan would work with Linux based clients today and > there has been a little movement in that direction, but the real irony is > that the company most damaged by the arrival of Linux has been Sun.
Well, I'm shocked at the sanity of this post. -Thufir _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
