Judge to Microsoft: Ship Sun’s Java

Networking news briefs from Microsoft, UnitedLinux,AT&T Broadband and others

• After yet another tussle between rivals Sun and Microsoft , a federal judge last week gave Microsoft 120 days to start shipping Sun’s Java as part of its operating system software. The ruling is part of a private antitrust suit Sun brought against Microsoft and comes after the two argued over terms of a preliminary injunction that District Judge J. Frederick Motz issued last month. Sun complained that Microsoft was trying to undermine the judge’s ruling. Motz said he was willing to stay his 120-day ruling by two weeks in light of the fact that Microsoft likely would ask an appeals court to review it.

• More than 2 million AT&T Broadband customers will get new e-mail addresses sometime in March. For about 200,000 of them, this is the third e-mail address change in 12 months. Comcast officially acquired AT&T Broadband in November for $30 billion and assumed $24 billion of the cable unit’s debt. Customers with attbi.com e-mail addresses will be completely switched over to Comcast.net addresses within the next 60 days. All former AT&T Broadband customers will have to notify all parties of the e-mail switch or they will not receive their messages after Comcast takes the attbi.com system offline.

• SAP last week took the wraps off its new integration and application server middleware, called NetWeaver, which is to become the platform on which all SAP business software will run. Based on Web services and aimed at easing users’ integration headaches, NetWeaver can link disparate applications and data sources, letting companies make use of their existing IT investments and personnel skills while exploiting the power of Web services, SAP says. It’s designed with heterogeneous IT systems in mind. NetWeaver is interoperable with Microsoft .Net and IBM WebSphere platforms, SAP says. Users can provision Web services that have been developed in Java or SAP’s own development language, ABAP. NetWeaver will become the backbone for all SAP applications, the software maker says. It’s the next generation of the company’s mySAP Technology platform, which was introduced in 2001.

• The Federal Communications Commission will not relax its rules governing the Baby Bells to a point where competition with local phone service providers is killed off, FCC Chairman Michael Powell told a group of U.S. senators last week. Powell, speaking before the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, offered few details on what direction the FCC plans to take during its so-called triennial review of rules governing the regional Bell operating companies and their unbundled network elements under the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The FCC decides what UNEs the RBOCs must make available to competitors at wholesale prices. Powell disputed press reports that the FCC was headed toward a drastic overhaul of the rules allowing providers such as WorldCom and AT&T to access some network elements owned by the RBOCs, including Verizon and SBC. The Baby Bells will have to offer some access to competitive local exchange carriers. “I pledge that to you right now,” Powell said.

• Linux distributor MandrakeSoft last week said it had filed for bankruptcy protection at a court in its home country of France. The company said a series of quarterly losses led to the filing but that current operations would continue, including the release of Version 9.1 of its software due in April. Financial problems at the company became public last year when an appeal appeared on its Web site asking users to contribute to a Mandrake Linux Users Club and Corporate Club. Money raised would be used to help support the company and support development of future distributions of its software, it said at the time.

• UnitedLinux, a common Linux operating system from four vendors, will later this quarter be updated to make it suitable for carrier-grade servers. Carrier Grade Linux 1.1 features will be available as a service pack for UnitedLinux 1.0. The expanded operating system will let carriers develop and deploy new products and services at a lower cost on a standards-based and modular platform, the UnitedLinux group says. UnitedLinux with the CGL features initially will work only on Intel-based hardware platforms, according to a statement. The CGL features were defined by a working group of the Open Source Development Labs, an independent, nonprofit laboratory created in August 2000 to help Linux developers add enterprise capabilities to the open source Linux operating system. OSDL member companies include Dell, HP, IBM, Intel and SuSE Linux.