forwarded message from Olivier.Lefevre@wdr.com

Fri Aug 6 10:08:00 GMT 1999

I'm forwarding this for Olivier Lefevre.
I don't want to sound smug, particularly as I may be wrong, but I strongly 
suspect that you are all missing the point and that SUN's decisions to go with 
an all-Java windowing framework is that at some point SUN plans to offer a Java 
windowing toolkit with Solaris, possibly running on a Java co-processor. Then of
course Swing would go native overnight.
Indeed this ties in rather neatly with SUN's early plans for a Java OS, the 
increasing Java-ization of Solaris, the trend in their microlelectronics 
division towards increasing on-chip integration and the continuing work in that 
same division on Java chips. The latest development at SUN Micro: the 
announcement of the "Microprocessor Architecture for Java Computing" effectively
blends the last two trends.
Another way to look at it is to remind yourself that there are very smart people
working for SUN (the Open Source -TM- movement does not have a monopoly of them)
and the probability that there is a good reason for this apprarently aberrant 
choice is rather higher than at most other companies. It just isn't obvious 
(yet). Of course in the interim the drawbacks that you indicated are all too 
real. 
Only time will tell what SUN's plan are (or were) and whether the course they 
took was wise. After all, they already blew it once with windowing systems: when
they failed to make NeWS a standard like NFS and had to go to Canossa as a 
result (I mean, convert to X/Motif). Since in a rather convoluted way Java is 
heir to NeWS, maybe they want to undo this and get their revenge! OK, I was just
kidding with this last one...
Regards
-- O.L.