Gates acknowledges saying'Java' posed potential threat

WASHINGTON (AP) - Microsoft's top executive, Bill Gates, acknowledged in videotaped testimony shown yesterday that he believed a rival computer language, called "Java," could threaten his lucrative Windows franchise.

But rejecting one of the government's most important claims in its antitrust case, Gates denied that his company ever tried to discourage software developers from tailoring their products to use Java rather than Windows.

"Our concern is always to get people to develop Windows applications," Gates said. "... If we looked at how (Java) might be evolved in the future, we did think of it as something that competed with us for the attention of (software developers) in terms of whether or not they would take advantage of the advanced features of Windows."

Software programs written using Java, a language developed by Sun Microsystems Inc., can run on a variety of computers, usually with only minor changes, not just on computers using Microsoft's dominant Windows operating system.

The government alleges that Microsoft, sensing the threat from Java, encouraged programmers to use essentially a Windows-only version of Java, called J-Direct.

"We are just proactively trying to put obstacles in Sun's path and get anyone that wants to write in Java to use J-Direct and target Windows directly," Microsoft executive Tod Nielsen wrote in an August 1997 e-mail to Gates that was made public Tuesday.

Another employee, Ben Slivka, wrote to Gates in May 1997 that Sun was close to releasing a new version of Java, "which we're going to be pissing on at every opportunity."

After a lengthy exchange with Justice Department lawyer David Boies, Gates said of that e-mail: "He might mean that we're going to be clear that we're not involved with it, that we think there's a better approach."

The government contends Microsoft sought to illegally maintain its Windows monopoly among computer operating systems, a claim that Boies earlier this week described as "the core of the case."

Microsoft yesterday questioned James Gosling, the computer scientist at Sun who helped create Java during the early 1990s.

To bolster claims that Microsoft was responding legally to a new rival technology, it released a September 1995 e-mail from Sun executive Bill Joy, who wrote: ''Java gives Sun a chance to break away from the Microsoft monopoly.''

Microsoft also confronted Gosling with his own 1995 e-mail predicting that a $3.75 million-a-year deal to let Microsoft distribute Java would allow the technology to ''instantly become a galactic standard.''

That March 1996 sales agreement became hotly disputed, with Sun suing Microsoft in federal court last year over its Windows-only version of Java. A judge last month ordered Microsoft to stop selling any type of Java incompatible with Sun's.

''Personally, I don't trust them,'' Gosling wrote in November 1995. ''The planet is littered with companies that did deals with Microsoft, expecting to win big but ended up getting totally screwed.''

Gates is not among the two-dozen witnesses testifying at the trial, but under court rules the government can use his statements as evidence. Lawyers questioned him over three days last summer.

Microsoft sought to use parts of the Gates video to suggest that government lawyers didn't understand some technical issues.

Boies asked Gates: ''Why do you want people to write in J-Direct as opposed to Java?''

The question, as it was posed, is similar to asking why someone would drive a Camaro rather than a Chevrolet, the company that manufactures Camaros.

''They are writing in Java,'' answered Gates, clearly exasperated. ''You can only use J-Direct if you write in Java.''

The government used the Gates video to introduce Gosling as its eighth trial witness.

In written testimony prepared at the judge's request, Gosling accused Microsoft of trying to neutralize Java by altering it - ''analogous to adding to the English language words and phrases that cannot be understood by anyone else,'' he said.

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