February 12, 2001

12:05 PM

Children, if you can't play nice, go to your rooms. Microsoft and Sun are now throwing rotten eggs at each other. I haven't seen the atmosphere between two large corporations get this ugly since the MCI/AT&T long distance wars. As Ars Technica puts it, "Man, their bad blood has gone from lengthy legal disputes to 'Oh Yeah? Well your mom is ugly!' type squabbling."
posted by Steven Den Beste (6 comments total)

"Children, children! Stop fighting! Mommy thinks you're both bad, ugly, rotten children!"
posted by Skot at 12:16 PM on February 12, 2001

I noticed this last year. Looks like they haven't grown up since then.
posted by mathowie at 12:33 PM on February 12, 2001

wow, that was an interesting timeline, mathowie :) thanks.
posted by pnevares at 1:18 PM on February 12, 2001

I don't know who started this, but it looks like Microsoft will use any tactic necessary if they cannot squash their opposition.
posted by Zool at 3:38 PM on February 12, 2001

Forget the browser wars. Microsoft won them. The next battle is over the web app platform (distributed application framework). Microsoft is promoting their .NET initiative with the Java rip-off C# (C-sharp) language. Sun is promoting their Smart Web Services with Java. Whoever wins this one will control the next wave of software development. Microsoft wants to make it propritary. Sun wants to keep it open, but using Java as the glue. But because Microsoft doesn't have even a demo of .NET ready to show the public, they are resorting to the kind of cat-fighting referenced above.
posted by camworld at 4:27 PM on February 12, 2001

Sun like hell wants to keep it open. If Sun was interested in "open" they would have surrendered control of Java to an industry standards body. Twice they proved what they really believed.

Ignore their words, judge them by their actions. They're no more interested in "open" than Microsoft is.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 10:48 PM on February 12, 2001