SAN JOSE, California -- The second day of hearings in Sun Microsystems' infringement lawsuit against Microsoft centered around whether or not Redmond had demonstrated "bad intent" in licensing the Java programming language from its rival.
Sun lawyer James Batchelder spent much of Wednesday afternoon having Java co-creator James Gosling explain why he thought the modifications that Microsoft made to Java were tantamount to unfair competition practices.
Gosling said that of all the companies licensed to use the Java code, including IBM and Oracle, only Microsoft changed the low-level components.
He said that Microsoft altered Java's native interface in order to link it with its own Windows operating system.
Sun claims that Microsoft's modifications to the Java code language constitute a breach of contract, and a deliberate attempt on Microsoft's part to fragment and undermine Java's market. Sun said that Microsoft's modifications are tantamount to "polluting" Java.
According to Gosling, Microsoft representatives told a meeting of developers in early 1997 that they were considering adding "extensions" to the pre-existing Java code in order to link it to different Microsoft products.
The developers, along with representatives from the other companies featuring Java in their programs, reacted so negatively, Gosling said, that Microsoft backed off.
"They said they would never be 'cowboys' and go off and do such a thing," Gosling said Wednesday.
But Microsoft went ahead and "unilaterally" decided to add extensions to Java anyway, said Gosling, a move he claimed was damaging to both developers and customers.
As evidence, Batchelder presented a letter to the court from PeopleSoft, an applications developer, protesting Microsoft's changes to Java.
The letter, written by PeopleSoft chief technology officer Ken Morris to JavaSoft's president, Alan Baratz, expressed fears that the "splintering of Java would destroy one of the most powerful benefits of the technology -- that it is based on a universally agreed-upon standard."
Morris went on to say that "competing Java definitions would force every applications developer, including PeopleSoft ... to divert valuable development resources toward porting efforts at the expense of product innovation...."
Porting is the often time-consuming process of rewriting a particular piece of software so that it can run on different computer systems. One of the key ideas behind Java is that programs written in the language can run on multiple machines and operating systems.
In an aggressive cross-examination of Gosling, Microsoft lawyer Karl Quakenbush argued that software developers who use Java-supporting Windows development tools have the option of using a "mode switch."
Quakenbush said the switch lets a coder choose between using the original Java language, or the version modified by Microsoft.
Thursday's hearing is closed to the public, due to the sensitivity of intellectual property material being presented as evidence in court, said Sun spokeswoman Lisa Poulson.
