WSJ.com - Sun Urges IBM to Contribute To Open-Source Community

WSJ.com - Sun Urges IBM to Contribute To Open-Source Community "Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems Inc.'s chairman and chief executive officer, challenged International Business Machines Corp. to contribute intellectual property to the open-source community of software developers.
Mr. McNealy's remarks, at Sun's annual JavaOne conference, were a pointed retort to an open letter from IBM to Sun earlier this year, which urged Sun to make its popular Java programming language available on an open-source basis. In a portion of a keynote speech that he labeled with the question "where is the outrage?" Mr. McNealy suggested that IBM should be making contributions from its own vast pool of patents and other intellectual property before it publicly criticizes Sun not rushing to do so.
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In a press conference following his speech, Mr. McNealy said IBM should now take some similar steps, since the giant computer maker has more patents "than any other company on the planet." He said he believes that IBM "has Java envy," and "would love to wrest stewardship of Java away" from Sun. One reason is that Sun's success with Java helps Sun woo computer customers, he said.
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IBM wasn't the only company slammed by Mr. McNealy, who is known for his barbed wit. He also challenged Red Hat and Microsoft Corp. to get involved in the community process for managing Java. In the case of Microsoft, which is now something of a partner to Sun by virtue of a legal settlement between the companies earlier this year, Mr. McNealy also was critical of the software giant for not doing more to stop computer viruses.
"They are Microsoft viruses, that's what they are," Mr. McNealy said."

Good to see the progress continuining in the Sun/Microsoft relationship...