Jim Allchin: piss on Java

Date: October 1995

Snippet
To: Ben Silvka; Bob Muglia; Chris Jones; Craig Fiebig; Don Bradford; James J Allard; Jim Allchin; John Ludwig; John Shewchuk; Mike Conte; Paul Maritz; Richard Tong; Thomas Reardon Subject: Webmaster/Server ISV event - day one Date: Thursday October 05, 1995 1:12 PM

there is a java ocx wrapper that the starwave folks have done, who have some special license from sun.

From: Jim Allchin(Exchange) SMTP: jimall:EXCHANGE.MICROSOFT.com) Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 1995 10:20 AM To: bens; thomasre; mikecon; donbrad; chrisjo; bobmu; bradsi; craighm; jallard; jimall; johnshew; paulma; thomasre; mikecon; donbrad; chrisjo; bobmu; bradsi; rict; craig?; jallard; jimall; johnshew; paulma; richt; John Ludwig (Xenix)

Subject: Webmaster/Server ISV event - day one

I think we should avoid coming out too strong against Java until we have a more credible story. We can promote the OCX story as a more flexible way (i.e,. language neutral) to insert objects. but we really need VB to step up to the JAVA challenge before we piss on it. in the main time we should push on the language neutral aspects and expect numbers of OCXs that will exist in the marketplace. Another idea would be to do a JAVA OCX wrapper if such a thing could be done. If we had that then we would have a good story until VB be improved.

jim

From: John Ludwig (Xenix) Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 1995 7:56 AM To: bens; thomasre; mikecon; donbrad; chrisjo; bobmu; craig?; jallard; jimail; johnshew; paulma; rict Subject: Webmaster/Server ISV event - day one

i thought the day went reasonably well - good engagement from the audience on client and tools issues. i was worried that our story would look completely bogus but we came across looking reasonably credible. ~ people may have heard other things. these are the hottest issues i have heard discussed:

Java. we tried to softpedal our poison, didn't come out strongly against or for it. This didn't work, Java is top of mind for people, we will either need to come out for or against it. I think we should come out against, and I don't think it will cause the audience great consternation. In side discussions, the positioning points that seem to work.

Do you really want your creative staff writing c++ code? or would you rather have them using html and/or high level tools like blackboard and just stuffing controls? People want the latter. Microsoft's approach is "publisher friendly" in thomasre's words.

Java is the lowest common denominator. The Windows platform is moving ahead faster then the MAc or Unix, do you want to write an app that doesn't take advantage of 3d, OCXes, MPEG, VRML etc etc etc. No one wants to have a site that looks relativly uncool, they al understand that coolness attracts traffic.

The fact that we are committed to take OCXes and our browser and mmedia technologies cross platform to the Mac is also a compeling argument.

OCXes. people like OCXes a lot, many many people in the audience already have some investment in the technology. we must commit to get these cross platform (at least the runtime OCXes). dombrad's team will be the point on this effort.

Blackbird. people love it, makes it seem simple simple simple to create cool content. We must continue evolving blackbird to become our general purpose authering tool. it has to accommodate html editing as well, and has to oick up source control features requested by the audience.

MSN: my positioning in my opening talk was weak. but the bigger issue is that a fair number of people in the audience are heavily invested in msn. i heard from 2 types of people. Type one - vendors that had a mediaview title already and did a minor port to MSN. These vendors are not unhappy but haven't made a lot of money. They are still our friends and just want to get to the internet fast. Type two - vendors that created MSN content from scratch, these vendors are a little pissed they are not seeing the traffic they expected/were promised.

..

stealing an insight from chrisjo - the best news of the day was that no one mentioned os/2. os/2 is a nonevent for these people as a server or a client.

Full Exhibit
http://boycottnovell.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/px02412.pdf