>I suspect the MS strategy was to extend Java with neat features that only worked with Windows.
No arguement from me ;-)
I think J++ was superior but that isn't the main point with a supposedly "portable" language. I suppose if MS had gone the extra mile (10,000 miles probably) to make activeX work on Unix, Linux, AS400, etc. Sun would have had no objections.

Here it gets murky. MS implemented a mechanism to connect to their activeX-technology, not to specific things found in windows or Office. Why should they care for those other OS ? As the base mechanisms (IQuery, IUnknown, vTable) were neither rocket science not patented AFAIR.

>I chuckle at the prospect of MS being "forced" to develop C#. That's sort of like IBM forced them to continue with Windows because things weren't working out with OS/2.

I don't believe C# would be here if sun had not started the legal fuss. Back then there had been those "look and feel" law suits and language things between asthon tate and their "plagiarists". You were used to quite different implementations of pascal for instance, where the core elements of the language where implemented "portable", but IO and screen adressing could be wildly different. In the different basics even some of the core language elements were working differently.

AFAIR MS offered to implement the missing core modules - but that was not enough for sun. Part of sun's reasoning can be technically seen, as java back then was seen as one of the possible means to extend browser funtionality, and another implementation called "automagically" might brew trouble if a different, non-standard fulfilling brand was chosen. As they were could define the langauge scope, other implementations wolud be at risk, and giving them the *right* to forbid extensions (why would compiler warnings not be enough ?) made the "java" story a dead halt for MS, where the use of wizards and inline connotations (upps, AOP in today's newspeak) was more prominent than in other languages. "Java" was to be only what sun said it was...


>The force driving MS is profits.
Again no argument: J++ was meant to further *activeX* (aka MS Office) and WinAPI in/with java. But to argue any extension "right in the source" instead of traditional JNI gymnastics would weaken java is §$%&... So MS had to introduce a new language which is not a total clone, but more an identical twin than a nonidentical one. Was probably chaeper than to buy sun.

>Oops, sorry, the dollar dropped some more. Here's my 6 cents.

thanks. still pondering which currency will be the one after the Euro...

thomas