Microsoft executive testifies in Sun’s Java lawsuit

A senior Microsoft Corp. executive told a federal court in San Jose, CA, last week that the Java licensing contract the company signed with Sun Microsystems Inc. places limits on the features in Microsoft’s Java products that are required to pass muster with Sun’s Java compatibility tests.

“Testing is a very powerful feature, so Microsoft was careful to limit the features Sun could test for,” said Robert Muglia, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Tools and Applications Division.

Muglia made his remarks under questioning from Microsoft counsel Karl Quakenbush in the opening day of evidentiary hearings in Sun’s lawsuit against the software giant. In the lawsuit, Sun alleges Microsoft is using a version of Java in its products that does not comply with the specifications laid down in its licensing contract.

In almost two hours of questioning, Quakenbush pressed Muglia on details about negotiations with Sun over the contract, which was eventually signed at 3:45 a.m. on March 12, 1996, at Sun’s Cupertino, CA, Java headquarters, after a marathon 18-hour negotiating session between the companies, Muglia said.

Throughout the negotiations, Muglia told the court, Microsoft emphasized that it must retain the right to define certain features in its Java products if it was to sign the contract. In particular, Microsoft wanted the right to develop independently of Sun its own native code interfaces — application programming interfaces that determine that way programs written in Java interact with an operating system such as Windows, Muglia said.

Asked if Alan Baratz, president of Sun’s Java Software Division understood that requirement, Muglia replied: “He did.”

Sun executives were not immediately available for comment during a lunch break in the proceedings, but court documents filed by Sun point to contradictions between Muglia’s account of the negotiations and that of Baratz, who Sun called among its witnesses the following day.

“At no time did I agree that ‘Microsoft alone’ would create native code interfaces, or that Microsoft would not be obligated to implement the interfaces created by Sun, including a native code interface, and to do so in a manner that passes Sun’s compatibility test suite,” Baratz said in the filing.

Before the break, Sun counsel Lloyd Day began his cross-examination of Muglia. In a tone notably more aggressive than Quakenbush’s, Day pressed Muglia on public statements made by Microsoft about its intention to deliver an entirely compatible version of Java in its products.

Sun filed a lawsuit against Microsoft last October, claiming the software giant had used a version of Java in its browser software and software development tools that was incompatible with the specifications laid out in Sun’s Java licensing contract. Microsoft did this, according to Sun, to derail Java’s cross-platform capabilities, which has been widely perceived as a threat to the dominance of Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

Microsoft has steadfastly denied the charges, and says it has complied with the terms laid out in its Java licensing agreement.