Microsoft cancels “Java Summit” at last minute

December 3, 1997 — Abruptly, Microsoft has canceled its Java Summit, which had been scheduled for Friday and Saturday, Dec. 5 and 6, a move that surprised the “Java influentials” who had been invited to Redmond, WA to hear the software giant’s Java story.

Microsoft’s Developer Relations Group had planned to fly about 100 developers, Microsoft customers, and other Java devotees to its campus for its second Java Summit. But beginning Tuesday night, the invitees began getting the message that the summit was off, or postponed, according to Microsoft.

“I wonder what could be going on,” said Rick Ross, president of the Java Lobby, who learned of the cancellation Wednesday morning — the day before he was scheduled to fly to Redmond from New York. “I wonder whether this is a signal that Microsoft themselves are in some disarray about their handling of Java. It certainly doesn’t look very organized.”

A spokesperson for Microsoft blamed the cancellation on potential conflicts with fall Internet World in New York, which begins next week.

“Half of the speakers we had planned had problems [getting to the Summit], and a lot of developers we had invited expressed scheduling problems with Internet World,” the spokesperson said.

The company had billed the invitation-only summit as simply a chance to interact with customers and get their feedback. But — until it was cancelled — the meeting held considerably more intrigue than 1996’s Java Summit, chiefly because of the lawsuit Sun Microsystems filed against Microsoft earlier this year over Microsoft’s Java implementation.

Sun charged that Microsoft improperly modified its Java technology and failed Sun’s compatibility tests, violating the terms of the Java licensing agreement. Sun also asked the courts to ban Microsoft from using the Java-compatible logo on its products.

One developer who had been invited to the Java Summit speculated that the controversy swirling around Microsoft, particularly the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) antitrust case, may have been a factor in the cancellation.

“On Friday, the judge could come down with decisions about the future of the course of the Microsoft-DOJ proceedings,” said a developer who had been scheduled to go to the Java Summit. “That’s a very big deal. Maybe something developed in some other venue that is a real hot spot that Microsoft needs to pay attention to.”

“After having gotten the attention of their hand-picked ‘Java influentials,’ then to drop the ball like this, it can’t do very much for increasing the quality of the relationship” between the company and the Java community, that developer added.

Ross said he had been looking forward to talking face-to-face with Microsoft officials about its Java strategy. Defending Windows, the company calls Java a wonderful programming language but a poor potential operating system, although many developers and Microsoft rivals have declared Java and its “write once, run anywhere” promise manna from cross-platform heaven.

“Success in Java and success in Windows are not at odds,” Ross said. “Anyone doing serious Java development certainly intends to distribute their products in a format that runs on the Windows platform. Microsoft could make a lot of money on that.”

“In their invitation they say they want to ‘set the record straight,’ and I don’t interpret ‘set the record straight’ as the language of reconciliation,” Ross added.