November 10th, 2004
JDS for Windows (says Schwartz)? Not quite.
In his most recent treatise (and it is long, so you’ll want print it out), Sun COO/president Jonathan Schwartz says "Yes, we are committed to JDS/Windows." JDS is the acronym for Sun’s Java Desktop System — a soup to nuts operating system to productivity/communications applications desktop solution that, for $50 per year, is available on x86 hardware and comes with Solaris or Linux (take your pick). At that price, I also think it’s worth a tire kicking for just about any company. Whereas two of the components of JDS – Mozilla and StarOffice — are available for Windows and a Windows port of a third part — Novell Ximian Evolution — appears to be in an embryonic state on Sourceforge, Sun has never acknowledged the existence of a JDS/Windows. Such an offering would be tricky considering that the other JDSes include an operating system and it’s in neither Sun nor Microsoft’s best interests to allow such a beast to exist.
So, what should we make of Schwartz’s statement? Schwartz attempted to clarify by saying "if by [JDS/Windows], you mean committed to Windows releases of the Java platform, StarOffice, and Mozilla Firefox in JDS - to ensure complete compatibility between the JDS and Windows worlds (and all other worlds in which Mozilla/Java/Star will ship)." But the clarification is sufficiently ambiguous that it’s difficult if not impossible to make heads or tails of whether it means there will or won’t be a JDS/Windows (perhaps that was Schwartz’s intent). So, I made contact with Susan Jeffries, the product manager for Sun JDS who, until our call, had not seen Schwartz’s "announcement." Said Jeffries, "There is no version of JDS/Windows nor does Sun have plans to release one." ‘Nuf said.
