September 9, 1998 — Sun Microsystems Inc. Vice President and Fellow James Gosling, the co-creator of the Java programming language, told a court here today that Microsoft Corp. has compromised the cross-platform capabilities of Sun’s Java technology by modifying it in a way that Sun never intended.Also testifying at an evidentiary hearing today was Alan Baratz, president of Sun’s Java Software Division, who complained that Microsoft is “flooding the market with incompatible Java products.”“They have created a divergent version of the technology. They have made that divergent version dependent on their tools, their runtime (Java virtual machine), and their operating system,” Baratz said in the hearing that is part of Sun’s lawsuit against Microsoft. Baratz also contradicted testimony offered by Microsoft Senior Vice President Robert Muglia yesterday. In negotiating Microsoft’s Java licensing contract with Muglia, Baratz said he never said that Microsoft alone would be able to define interfaces to its Java virtual machine. Muglia yesterday had said that Microsoft’s contract allows it to define those unique interfaces.Earlier today, Gosling told the court, “There’s a tight interlock” between the Java technology Microsoft uses in its development tools and the software program — known as a Java virtual machine — it has developed to run those Java applications.One of Sun’s key goals with Java, Gosling said, was to develop a programming language that allowed developers to write a program once that would run on any platform. When a software developer uses Microsoft’s Visual J++ developer tool to write an application that uses both the Java and C programming languages, it will run only on Microsoft’s Java virtual machine, Gosling explained. This is because Microsoft has included compiler directives and keywords in its development tools that are not part of Sun’s Java specification, according to Gosling.Microsoft also acknowledged at a meeting in February 1997 that adding extensions to the Java language would be harmful to developers and end users, Gosling said.“They said they would never be cowboys and go off and do such things because it would be harmful,” he said. Among its allegations against Microsoft, Sun claims Microsoft has added extensions to Java that violate its licensing contract with Sun.In testimony yesterday, Muglia told the court Microsoft’s licensing contract with Sun allows it to modify the Java language in the way that it has.Sun has charged Microsoft with releasing a “polluted” version of Java in its Windows 98 software and Java development tools. The hearings this week are part of Sun’s request for a preliminary injunction that would force Microsoft to stop shipping those products until it complies with Sun’s Java specifications. The two sides will present oral arguments tomorrow. Pending the outcome of a separate hearing scheduled for later today, oral arguments tomorrow may or may not be open to the public. Technology Industry