To: Ben Silvka; Bob Muglia; Chris Jones; Craig Fiebig; Don Bradford;
James J Allard; Jim Allchin; John Ludwig; John Shewchuk; Mike Conte;
Paul Maritz; Richard Tong; Thomas Reardon
Subject: Webmaster/Server ISV event - day one
Date: Thursday October 05, 1995 1:12 PM
there is a java ocx wrapper that the starwave folks have done, who have
some special license from sun.
From: Jim Allchin(Exchange) SMTP: jimall:EXCHANGE.MICROSOFT.com)
Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 1995 10:20 AM
To: bens; thomasre; mikecon; donbrad; chrisjo; bobmu; bradsi; craighm;
jallard; jimall; johnshew; paulma; thomasre; mikecon; donbrad; chrisjo;
bobmu; bradsi; rict; craig?; jallard; jimall; johnshew; paulma; richt;
John Ludwig (Xenix)
Subject: Webmaster/Server ISV event - day one
I think we should avoid coming out too strong against Java until we have
a more credible story. We can promote the OCX story as a more flexible
way (i.e,. language neutral) to insert objects. but we really need VB to
step up to the JAVA challenge before we piss on it. in the main time we
should push on the language neutral aspects and expect numbers of OCXs
that will exist in the marketplace. Another idea would be to do a JAVA
OCX wrapper if such a thing could be done. If we had that then we would
have a good story until VB be improved.
jim
From: John Ludwig (Xenix)
Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 1995 7:56 AM
To: bens; thomasre; mikecon; donbrad; chrisjo; bobmu; craig?; jallard;
jimail; johnshew; paulma; rict
Subject: Webmaster/Server ISV event - day one
i thought the day went reasonably well - good engagement from the
audience on client and tools issues. i was worried that our story would
look completely bogus but we came across looking reasonably credible. ~
people may have heard other things. these are the hottest issues i have
heard discussed:
Java. we tried to softpedal our poison, didn't come out strongly against
or for it. This didn't work, Java is top of mind for people, we will
either need to come out for or against it. I think we should come out
against, and I don't think it will cause the audience great
consternation. In side discussions, the positioning points that seem to
work.
Do you really want your creative staff writing c++ code? or would you
rather have them using html and/or high level tools like blackboard and
just stuffing controls? People want the latter. Microsoft's approach is
"publisher friendly" in thomasre's words.
Java is the lowest common denominator. The Windows platform is moving
ahead faster then the MAc or Unix, do you want to write an app that
doesn't take advantage of 3d, OCXes, MPEG, VRML etc etc etc. No one
wants to have a site that looks relativly uncool, they al understand
that coolness attracts traffic.
The fact that we are committed to take OCXes and our browser and mmedia
technologies cross platform to the Mac is also a compeling argument.
OCXes. people like OCXes a lot, many many people in the audience already
have some investment in the technology. we must commit to get these
cross platform (at least the runtime OCXes). dombrad's team will be the
point on this effort.
Blackbird. people love it, makes it seem simple simple simple to create
cool content. We must continue evolving blackbird to become our general
purpose authering tool. it has to accommodate html editing as well, and
has to oick up source control features requested by the audience.
MSN: my positioning in my opening talk was weak. but the bigger issue is
that a fair number of people in the audience are heavily invested in
msn. i heard from 2 types of people. Type one - vendors that had a
mediaview title already and did a minor port to MSN. These vendors are
not unhappy but haven't made a lot of money. They are still our friends
and just want to get to the internet fast. Type two - vendors that
created MSN content from scratch, these vendors are a little pissed they
are not seeing the traffic they expected/were promised.
..
stealing an insight from chrisjo - the best news of the day was that no
one mentioned os/2. os/2 is a nonevent for these people as a server or a
client.
http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/2000/PX02412.pdf
--
court documents in the case of Comes v. Microsoft.
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