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Sun Microsystems Inc. a major antitrust victory against Microsoft Corp.
on Monday when a federal judge ordered Microsoft to distribute Sun's Java programming language in its Windows operating system.U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz said he would grant the preliminary injunction sought by Sun to level the playing field between the Java write-once, run-anywhere software and Microsoft's new .NET Internet services strategy.
Motz said there was a "substantial" likelihood the court will impose the condition permanently, calling it "an elegantly simple remedy" aimed at preventing Microsoft's past wrongs from giving it an advantage in the market battle for Internet-based computing.
The decision by Motz in the private antitrust suit revives a tough sanction against Microsoft that was rejected by another federal judge in the separate landmark government antitrust case against the world's biggest software company.
"I further find it is an absolute certainty that unless a preliminary injunction is entered, Sun will have lost forever its right to compete, and the opportunity to prevail, in a market undistorted by its competitor's antitrust violations," Motz said in the 42-page opinion.
Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler said the company will ask for an appeal of the ruling on an expedited basis. "Clearly we're disappointed with today's ruling and still need to review the details of the court's decision," Desler said.
"This decision changes the dynamics of the distribution channel for the Java technology," Morris said. That technology "promises to open the markets now monopolized by Microsoft to the benefits of robust competition and unrestrained innovation."
Sun charges Microsoft has tried to sabotage Java by a series of actions, most recently dropping it from Windows XP, which was introduced last year.
Microsoft later reversed itself and said it would start including Java in a Windows XP update, but only until 2004.
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