I, Cringely: Shake Your Groove Thing

[ Thanks to Jason Greenwood for this link. ]

"Jonathan Schwartz, who is the new president and chief operating officer of Sun Microsystems, contacted me after reading last week's column in which I characterized Sun's new deal with Microsoft as a capitulation. Of course, he disagrees with nearly everything I wrote. I might in some future column delve further into this disagreement (we've agreed to meet at some point, possibly stripped to the waist). But to tie together the thoughts of the last couple weeks so I can move on next week to something REALLY interesting, I'll give only a single quote from El Presidente Schwartz: 'This (agreement with Microsoft) makes Sun's Java Desktop STRONGER, not weaker. Now we have interoperability on our side.' By this, he means Windows interoperability, which was apparently a key goal of Sun, to have guaranteed access to Windows APIs and such. Alas, life in the software business is not so simple, and what Sun has actually obtained from Microsoft (beyond the money, of course) is less than nothing. It is an illusion of interoperability that will only hurt them in the long run..."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• I, Cringely: The Once and Future King(Apr 10, 2004)
• Internet Week: The Morality of Open Source(Mar 16, 2004)