A Year Ago: Sun wins round one of Java fight

Sun Microsystems Inc. has won approval from the ISO to submit Java as an international standard.

20 countries voted in favour while China and the US voted against. There were two abstentions.

The vote represents a defeat for Microsoft Corp., which lobbied hard against Sun becoming what's known as a "Publicly Available Submitter."

Microsoft general manager of developer relations Tod Nielsen -- who last week said he expected a 'Yes with comments' vote -- nonetheless indicated satisfaction that the ISO process had integrity.

However, JavaSoft President Alan Baratz said that any comments submitted are irrelevant to this vote. Sun must now submit the Java specification for ISO approval, a two-step process that Sun expects will take some months since the specification is not fully defined.

"What we submit depends on when it's done and what the de-facto standard is at the time. We don't want to submit something old or something that hasn't arrived yet. I'd like it to be something mature that has been used a bit," said JavaSoft VP Jim Mitchell.