From: Hopkins, Don [mailto:Hopkins, Don] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 02, 1998 6:04 PM
To: nix@meer.net; jwz@netscape.com; gnu@toad.com; jmackraz@maxis.com; ebowman@maxis.com; jdoornbos@maxis.com
Cc: dhopkins@maxis.com
Subject: The "butthead factor" of JavaSoft engineers. 

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/technology/zdnet/story.html?s=n/zdnn/technology/19980902/19980902609

Cooporation is equal to the limit as resources go to zero, of the
integral of bullshit over time, divided by the speed of java, times
the butthead factor.

	    -Don

From: Charles Fitzgerald 
Sent: Thursday, July 03, 1997 6:01 PM 
To : Bill Gates: Paul Maritz; Jim Allchin )Exchange); Bob Muglia )Exchange) 
Cc : Russ Arun; David Cole; John Ludwig 
Subject: Novell and Java 

As a follow-up to Bill's discussion with Eric Schmidt a couple weeks
ago, we met with Novell's Java architect and business development
people to discuss opportunities to collaborate on "Java server APIs."

Their basic proposal was Microsoft and Novel cooperate to define
standard Java APIs for things like file/print directory, security,
licensing, database, transactions, messaging queuing, management,
etc. Security/licensing was suggested as an initial test case. Novell
is on a Java-first strategy going forward, but they will also expose
services to C/C++ and VS?? Developers through parallel API
implementations.]

Needless to say, we asked why they were talking to us. They claim to
be frustrated with the JavaSoft's lack of speed, resource limits and
the "butthead factor" of their engineers. Displayed some animosity to
Sun, Baratz in particular. But when issues between the two companies
are escalated to senior management, they are quickly resolved. They
believe Schmidt still has considerable clout with Sun. Eventually came
out and said that if Microsoft and Novell support the same APIs it
will be the standard. They are already invested in JNDI ) JavaSoft's
directory API, which Novell drove) and some other of JavaSoft's APIs.

It is hard to see the benefits to Microsoft of doing this, but I am
pretty far from the server space It is Java-only common APRs for NT
and NetWare gives them a develope? story now undermines our Win32
advantage, gives them a set of APIs to transition from NetWare to
something else under and if their services are on NT they get? Compete
with our services via a single API that has our endorsement. A
conspiracy theorist could argue this is Schmidt trying to get
Microsoft as invested in Java as possible. They do believe in Java the
platform and babble about how wonderful the world would be with a
single open, cross-platform API set. The upside would be undermining
the ABM crowd, but given Novell is on the CORBA//IIOP bandwagon, it is
not clear how far this would go.

We had a side discussion on the openness of Java. They support Sun's
ISO proposal (but fortunately can't vote). They claim to fear another
OMG that can't move fast enough. They honestly believe Microsoft is
involved in Sun's "open process." We said this was not the case, and
pointed them to JNDI, a case they should be familiar with. We argued
this is symptomatic and whatever they may believe about the
competitive dynamic a standards process which excludes Microsoft is
hard to characterize as open. They rationalized the exclusion of
Microsoft as equally our fault somehow. They would consider joining a
W3C-like organization for the evolution of Java, and said they had
been approached by other vendors about such a group previously.

We need some guidance for whether this is interesting to pursue. We
agreed to get back to them next week with our reaction.