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After The Wall Street Journal warned on Wednesday that Microsoft was distancing itself from Java in its upcoming version of Windows, a number of Java devotees squealed that the company was shutting out their programs.
Things aren't that bad, Microsoft said later in the day.
"Anyone who wants Java support in Windows XP can get it," said spokesman Tom Pilla. "First of all, (computer manufacturers) will be able to add it to the machines they sell. Corporations, companies can add it for their employees. And if you're upgrading from an old version of Windows that already has it, Windows XP won't remove it. So that eliminates a lot of people."
Still, it's true that Windows XP won't actually ship with support for Java, the "cross-platform" programming language developed by Sun Microsystems that allows for some of the flashy programs you can find on the Web.
Microsoft won't include the Java Virtual Machine -- the piece of software needed to run applications written in Java -- "in the wake of our settlement agreement with Sun," Pilla said.
That agreement came about after Sun sued Microsoft in 1997, alleging that Microsoft was creating a Windows-only version of the language. In a settlement reached in January, Microsoft admitted no wrongdoing, but said that it would slowly phase out its Windows-centric version of the language. Sun allowed Microsoft to ship an outdated version of its virtual machine for seven years.
Pilla said the move to remove Java completely was simply accelerating compliance with that settlement. "Our decision is not surprising," he said.
It was pretty funny that he said this, because David Harrah, a spokesman for Sun, said: "We were quite surprised by this development."
He added, "The settlement between Sun and Microsoft gave them the right to distribute the (virtual machine) for seven years, and we certainly negotiated in good faith that they would do this. If they didn't want to do that, why did they sign? If they're saying this is part of the settlement, that is not true."
Harrah also disputed Microsoft's assertion that the move wouldn't hurt consumers; he said that consumers would be most hurt, as there are 7 million Web pages out there running Java applets, and those pages will be quite lackluster if their Java doesn't run. (And it goes without saying that this will kill -- kill! -- the Jesus Christ on a pogo stick applet.)
"Our feeling is that while they preach this business about concern for the consumer, they're certainly not exhibiting concern for the consumer," Harrah said. "For the average consumer who is expecting that something works the first time they go to a site, and it's going to tell them they have to download something in order to continue -- nine times out of 10 I just say I don't have enough time, so I just move on."
But will such consumer apathy be the death of Java? Harrah doesn't think so. While Harrah believes that Microsoft's move is unfortunate, he said "this doesn't have a lot of impact because Java is now being loaded on set-top boxes and PDAs and cell phones and other examples of what we call the modern client. And in those areas Microsoft doesn't have the same power they have on the PC."
But whether Java will find life in mobile devices is, of course, debatable. Microsoft, for its part, is trying to conquer those devices as well, and some parts of its .Net software platform have already been embraced by open-source programmers.
And all this left some people in Java user groups pretty upset on Wednesday:
"Some battles were won, like the ones between M$ and SUN over the control of Java, where SUN won," said Emmanuel Charpentier in a mournful, what-will-happen-to-Java tone.
"It looked like nice victories, like good rationalization to the continual proprietary model, but it was not the end of that war.... And now that the Free Software leaders are joining M$ technologies because those are more open, well, where are we going to be in five years time?"
