Sun alleges new Java violations by Microsoft

Palo Alto, Calif. - A recent round of compliance tests on early versions of upcoming Microsoft Java products show additional Java incompatibilities, Sun Microsystems officials said Wednesday.

Sun filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Microsoft last October, alleging that tests revealed Internet Explorer (IE) 4.0 browser and Software Developers Kit for Java (SDK) 2.0 were not fully Java compliant as required under the Java licensing agreement signed by the software giant.

Testing of the pre-release versions of two development tools -- SDK 3.0 and Visual J++ 6.0 - and IE 4.0.1 turned up two new incompatibilities with the Java standard, Sun spokesperson Lisa Poulson said:

1. Microsoft has added new key words to the implementations, in violation of the Java language specification as well as testing requirements under the licensing agreement.

2. Microsoft has tied its Java compiler to its Windows-specific Virtual Machine for Java. This means that code written using the Microsoft Java compiler can only run on Windows, Sun said.

The latest tests do show that Microsoft has removed mislabeled Java class libraries, which Poulson called "a step toward compliance."

But Microsoft still does not support Java Native Interface (JNI) and Remote Method Invocation (RMI), two key omissions that prompted Sun's lawsuit, she said.

JNI provides an interface through which a Java application developer can access native code, such as C or C++, that lives on an operating system, while RMI allows developers to write applications that communicate with Java applications on other computing systems.

The new version of IE can be downloaded from Microsoft's Web site. SDK 3.0 and VJ++ 6.0 are not yet available.

Sun has accused Microsoft of trying to create its own flavor of Java, thus destroying the programming language's "write once, run anywhere" premise. Microsoft officials said they have not violated its Java licensing agreement with Sun.

Sun's Java lawsuit page