Sun / Microsoft Settlement Webcast Live

Just watching the webcast following on from the Sun / Microsoft settlement. I can't tell you how odd it feels as a Microsoft employee to see Scott McNealy (Sun CEO) and Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) sitting next to each other on a press conference stage, let alone joking with each other and exchanging ice hockey shirts. We've been very vigorous competitors for so many years in the enterprise space, that I'm still in shock - it's the equivalent of Coca-Cola and Pepsi agreeing to share their secret recipes in terms of significance for the part of the industry I work in.

Q. "Are we going to see a merged version of Java and C#?" (news.com)
A. "We're not going to say never, but there are no immediate plans to merge C# and Java, or .NET and Java Web Services" (Scott McNealy)

Even the fact that the question is seriously being asked indicates the bombshell that this announcement is causing...

"We're going to continue to compete; you're going to continue to hear each of us claim Windows servers are best... or Sun servers are best." (Steve Ballmer, paraphrased)

"You'll see the gradual building of a portfolio of interoperability" (Scott McNealy)

"From the developer perspective, we see some immediate benefits, and we're getting Gates and [inaudible Sun employee] to identify additional areas of benefit." (Steve Ballmer)

"If more customers like this, it's going to attract developers, because developers are attracted by volume." (Scott McNealy)