Sun continues to hammer Microsoft over their Java lack-of-strategy. A little history: way back when, Sun stupidly announced that Java would let them virtualize the desktop before they had managed to get themselves irretrievably ensconced as the market leader. Microsoft responded by releasing a version of the Java interpreter that (a) ran only on Windows, and (b) had some unapproved-by-Sun hooks in it that allowed developers to write Windows-only Java apps that did things that 100% Java apps couldn't (like script COM objects, f'rinstance). Sun took them to court over the license violation, since the Java license says you can't change the language and still call it Java. Microsoft renamed the product, and started getting rid of Java completely (this eventually turned into C# and dot-NET).

To thumb their noses at Sun, Microsoft began carrying a particular broken interpreter in the O.S. which had the "unforseen" side-effect of making Java apps look bad and break strangely. A previous lawsuit managed to get a court to enjoin Microsoft from doing this anymore. Next, Microsoft began shipping the O.S. without any Java at all, secure in the knowledge that the vast majority of people would never go get a JVM, so Java will (again) be a non-starter on Windows as an application development environment.

Now, Sun has gotten a court to rule that Microsoft's Windows must use Java. As much as I don't like Microsoft, and often spend valuable hours of my life cursing them and their bug-infested security holes, this isn't right either. I haven't read the court's opinion, but how do you justify forcing Microsoft to bundle their competitor's products with their own? And why just Sun's product? Why are they special? This just seems like a bad idea.

Did I say I wasn't a big Microsoft fan? Just wanted to make sure.

Note that this doesn't affect the viability of Java as a server-side environment. As far as I can tell from my individual perch, there is so much Java servlet/JSP development going on that dot-NET has approximately zero chance of really taking the niche.