Fwd: RE: Microsoft backlash in France (fwd)

[Boris Groendahl <boris@well.com>]

---------------- Begin Forwarded Message ----------------
Date:        09.26.  08:01
Received:    09.26.  10:41
From:        Matthias W. Zehnder, zehnder@zdm.ch
To:          Grohndahl, Boris, boris@well.com

Nice text.

Se non e vero, e ben trovato...

Read this one...

Liberty, fraternity ... and Java? 

By Francois Lambel and Elizabeth Heichler  InfoWorld Electric 

Posted at 2:52 PM PT, Sep 25, 1997  If there's another French 
revolution brewing, it probably won't involve Bill Gates being 
carted off to the guillotine amid cries of "Vive Java!" 

A story told by Alan Baratz, president of Sun Microsystems' 
JavaSoft business, at a press conference this week painted the 
picture of large crowd of French developers booing an anti-Java 
presentation at a recent Microsoft developers conference in 
Paris. But the tale doesn't seem to hold up when checked with 
developers who were there. 

According to Baratz, "At the recent Microsoft developer 
conference in Paris, about 1,200 developers got an earful from 
Microsoft about Java. As Microsoft increased the noise level, 
FUDding [fear, uncertainty, and doubt] Java, the crowd booed 
and yelled, 'Go Java'. The crowd then began leaving in droves. 
At the end of the hour, there were 50 people in the room." 

The reality appears to be more boring -- in fact, it was 
apparently the boredom suffered by developers sitting through 
the Microsoft presentations that were responsible for the 
original crowd of 1,200 dwindling as the day wore on, according 
to six different accounts of the conference obtained by a 
Paris-based reporter. 

A presentation knocking Java was given in the afternoon, when 
many people had already left, according to the sources, who 
were also critical of the general quality of the information 
Microsoft shared during a day ostensibly devoted to Internet 
Explorer 4.0. One source had stayed only in the hopes of 
winning a QuickCam at the end of the day. And although there 
apparently was some heckling during the Java talk, including a 
cry of "allez Java," it came from a group of about a dozen 
people sitting together, several sources reported. 

A JavaSoft representative contacted yesterday said that 
Baratz's source for the anecdote was two e-mails JavaSoft had 
received. The two e-mails are identical, word-for-word, except 
that one has an introductory paragraph the other is lacking, 
and came from a Sun employee in France, the representative 
acknowledged. Interestingly, the same e-mail was sent to a 
French reporter but also includes the claim that the 
unidentified writer was the one who shouted "allez Java." 

No further comment was forthcoming from JavaSoft, nor from 
Baratz, who told the anecdote after proclaiming "now is the 
right time for us to cut through all the rhetoric." 



Francois Lambel is an editor at Le Monde Informatique, an IDG 
France publication. Elizabeth Heichler is a Boston 
correspondent for the IDG News Service, and InfoWorld 
affiliate. 


Gruesse / Regards

Matthias W. Zehnder
ZDM

---
ZDM Zehnder Digital Media  Tel: +41 61 273 02 73
Hans Huber-Strasse 15      Fax: +41 61 271 66 80
P.O.Box 475, CH-4008 Basel Mail zehnder@zdm.ch

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