or datatone/webtone equipment on the client and server side. Wintel, Sun, and IBM are the only
three equipment suppliers left. Everyone else are just dealers of other peoples' equipment.
The problem with Microsoft and Intel is that it's a lot like General and Motors, with Fisher Body separated from Chevrolet, and that's why it takes 10 years to get a 32-bit operating system on a 32-bit microprocessor. It's hard to merge them up at the end of the assembly line when you're not under the same shareholder agreement.
BYTE:
A lot of the open interfaces -- TCP/IP, HTML, for example -- are controlled by standards bodies. You own the Java spec.
McNealy:
No, this is huge: You can go out and write a Java virtual machine to that spec. I will not sue you. So, "own" is too loaded a word. We're going to continue to drive that [specification] forward. If you want to call it Java the brand, yeah, we own Java. The problem with UNIX is that nobody protected the brand to mean something and therefore the brand lost value.
BYTE:
Is that the primary lesson you take from the UNIX experience, that branding was lacking?
McNealy:
I also think that licensing terms of UNIX were very, very different. We're fundamentally saying that you don't need a Java license from us to go do what you need to go do. You have to go out and just do a great implementation.
BYTE:
How important is it to the success of Java Enterprise Computing that you have a compelling Windows compatibility strategy?
McNealy:
We'll provide it the right way. Put it on one server, you only have to buy one copy. And I'm urging every CEO to make sure it runs really slow, so that people stop using that stuff. The right way is to ban Power Point from your company. The second best answer is to buy just one copy. And the wrong answer is to give everyone their own personal copy.
When the anthropologists dust off the 1980s and 1990s and look at the produ
ctivity dip, they're going to blame Office. I banned PowerPoint from my company and we've had the best two quarters we've ever had in the history of the company. I want to give everybody plastic Mylar sheets and all of the pens they need to scribble on them. And I said use what I call the [Sun co-founder] "
Bill Joy font
". You can see where he licked his thumb and erases, it's so much faster.
BYTE:
Suppose the whole world converted to Java-centric computing today. Is the infrastructure there?
McNealy:
That would be a problem. The beauty of the fact that not everybody buys into what we're doing is that it gives us a head start. This is an architecture that really does scale like no other architecture has ever done. It's got all the new stuff built into it, like threading and absolute objects. This is not object-oriented, this is an object-based language. It had enough compelling new features that it is just the right answer.
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Why Java Won't Repeat the Mistakes of Unix
