Bill Gates: I am hardcore on not supporting Suns Java

Date: 1997

Snippet
From: Ben Slivka Sent: Wednesday, May 14 1997 11:35 AM To: Bill Gates; John Ludwig; Charles Fitzgearld Cc: Arron Contorer; Paul Maritz; Brad Silverberg Subject: RE: DirectX and Talisman Update (Java JDK 1.2 support)

To quote charles on JDK 1.2 support: "No fucking way!"

The Java community is having a hard time digesting JDK 1.1, and while it has important new features (like Beans), it still has that crapy AWT stuff, shitty printing, the list goes on and on. JDK 1.2 had JFC, which we're going to be pissing on at every opportunity.

This summer we're going to totally divorce Sun ..

We'll come out swinging with AFC, with our new Multi-Class File format (for packaging both native code as well as byte codes, saves lots of space), with Java language extensions (peteku/andersh are driving), with very easy-to-use support for calling Win32 DLLs (we demo'd a Petzold app written in Java, complete with message pump, windprocs etc. - you had to look very close to see that it was Java), with clesses for DirectX and DHTML, with Enterprise AFC classes (that's all I can remember off the top of my head). We're really jucing up our JIT compiler - peteku just checked in function inlining last night, and we've got a P5 instruction scheduler, too. Our latest VM beats all comers (Sun, Netscape, Symantic) in almost every singe benchmark.

From: Bill Gates: Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 1997 11:21 AM To: John Ludwig Cc: Arron Contorer; Ben Slivka Subject: RE: DirectX and Talisman Update

I would be very glad to talk about this. Christine - see if we can get a time in the next 2 - 3 week setting aside an hour.

I did stick a few "barb" comments about cross platform which I should have avoided but it's a key topic that has me worried.

The email exchange this morning with Charles Fitzgerald was very helpfull to my thinking on this. I think supporting JDK 1.1 is fine and I am hard core about NOT supporting JDK 1.2. I really needed to understand where we are going to draw the line because I am so afraid of the slippery slope.

If you think we should support JDK 1.2 its ok but you will really have to explain why and where it stops.

Full Exhibit
http://boycottnovell.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/plex0_2710.pdf

BN blog coverage at: http://boycottnovell.com/2008/12/28/why-supports-odf-11-not-12/

Can a 'Java' applet written to make calls to a Win32 DLL still be called a JAVA applet.