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MICROSOFT CORP. is raising the stakes in the race to control Java.
The company has developed its own version of the Abstract Windowing Toolkit, which is a foundation Java technology, and will license Java class libraries to run on top of the toolkit.
Microsoft's Application Foundation Classes will be available to developers for free to include with their Java applications. But Microsoft will offer different terms to Sun Microsystems Inc.-Java's creator-as well as other tools and operating system vendors, said Charles Fitzgerald, a Microsoft program manager.
Microsoft's plan already is raising eyebrows among Java developers.
"We're a Java licensee just like Microsoft," said one Java developer. "This raises pretty profound legal issues . . . about what is an extension."
Fitzgerald would not discuss planned licensing terms.
"We have to give Sun back our Virtual Machine and any work we do to their class libraries, but these are not theirs," Fitzgerald said. "For the right...