Well, we all knew what was going on. Microsoft Windows was THE dominant OS, and was Microsoft's bread and butter. But the OS was utter shit, and nobody wanted to use it. They wanted to use the Mac OS, or move to the client-server model of "dumb terminals" or "set top boxes".

So MS had to keep people beholden to their OS.

If Java worked, then it wouldn't matter what OS you ran... you could buy any program and run it on any Java-compatible OS.

MS couldn't let that happen. Their software was bloated shit, but you HAD to use it. There was no choice. As soon as a viable choice came out, MS was going to lose a LOT of money.

We all knew it came down to these three functions in the JavaVM. If MS implemented them, they would have shot themselves in the foot, and would bleed out. But Java was the sweetheart of the tech industry... the big promise... the future of technology. So MS had to SEEM like they were on-board with it, all the while working in the background to undermine the entire concept.

This is where they came up with their "Embrace And Expand" strategy, where they would adopt the latest sweetheart technology, then add a bunch of Window-only features, thereby destroying the new technology and locking their uses into the Windows OS again. They did this with innumerable products and technologies. It's why Internet Explorer was such garbage, and still is today... it supports all these "standards" that Microsoft has perverted with Windows-specific code. ASP, .NET, C#, ActiveX... everything they have ever "innovated" is a failure on any platform other than Windows, because you never know if the call you are making is supported anywhere other than the MS platform.

(Shit, they bought Bungie - a hugely successful MAC gaming company - and their VERY NEXT RELEASE of the software was Windows-only. Most the team fled. Didn't even wait for their MS stock to vest.)

So yeah... MS was the 800lb gorilla that we had to make nicey-nice with, if we wanted Java to become the worldwide standard for OS-agnostic software applications. We had hoped that all the publicity, all the co-marketing we did, all the presentations, would eventually force them to implement those last three functions, despite the fact that it would ultimately hurt their business. But with Java running everywhere, seamlessly, the entire market could change for EVERYONE... there would be new ways to "win", and MS would be at the forefront of that.

But, instead of choosing to go for pushing the industry forward and embracing innovation, MS went with entrenching and creating a decade worth of utterly shit OSes.

Thanks, Microsoft. (98, Bob, Me, 2000, Vista... and on and on and on and on...)