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Move may threaten client-side development
It's official: After months of speculation, Microsoft Corp. last week confirmed that Java is being dropped from its latest operating system release, undermining Sun Microsystems Inc.'s revived effort to foster client-side Java application development.
Prerelease copies of Windows XP and its new browser, Internet Explorer 6.0, slated to ship this fall, don't include the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) that was used in Windows 2000 and Internet Explorer 5.0. PCs must have a copy of that piece of Java software to run Java applets.
"It's not really surprising," said Rob Enderle, an analyst at Giga Information Group Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. "Microsoft was very clear about what it would do after the Sun settlement, which is back away from Java."
As part of its settlement with Sun, which claimed that Microsoft had infringed...