HP Java Test Kit Strikes Blow Against Sun (03/16/99, 12:26 p.m. ET) By Guy Middleton, Network Week Hewlett-Packard has struck a blow in its Java war with Sun by releasing an open source test kit to encourage developers to build products compatible with its Chai Virtual Machine. The company said the ChaiVM would be packaged with Microsoft's Windows CE 3.0 and could become the most widely distributed non-Sun Java environment. The test kit, which runs 500 tests to check for compliance with Chai, has been added to Mauve, a developers' resource supporting open source Java projects so anyone can develop Java without paying fees. Last December Sun allowed its licensees to develop Java, but required them to pay royalties once they shipped a Java-compatible product. HP - which leads the breakaway Real-Time Java Working Group - has been applauded for the move by some in the Java development world, but there are concerns that rival testing specifications could lead to fragmentation in Java, threatening the 'write once, run anywhere' ideal of its technology. Java Lobby president Rick Ross said: "When Sun announced the Sun Community Source License program at the Java Business Expo last December, I immediately thought they should have made the Java Compatibility Kit free and freely available.....If Sun doesn't have the sense to open up the testing tools, then they should at least have the decency not to disparage the efforts of others to make quality testing tools available." And Sun spokesman Guy Martin was skeptical about HP's move: "There's a lot of support needed to get the testing right, with Sun's JCK you can see how comprehensive the testing suite is." From MAILER-DAEMON@cs.depaul.edu Wed Mar 17 15:41:42 1999