Hewlett-Packard Co has announced four more licensees for its own clean-room implementation of embedded Java and simultaneously took a swipe at Java inventor Sun Microsystems Inc, teaming with Intel Corp and Wind River Systems Inc to call for a vendor- neutral standards process for Java technology in embedded systems. The new licensees are all real-time operating system (RTOS) vendors: Integrated Systems Inc, Lynx, Microware Systems Inc and QNX – all of whom have promised to have HP’s Java running atop their RTOS by the summer. HP also announced the support of Intel and said the two companies are working jointly on optimizing the HP virtual machine for Intel’s embedded Pentium processor. HP’s director of marketing for embedded systems Byron Ryono said the four licensees had paid a fee for the technology, but Intel was not yet a licensee. HP attacked Sun’s plans to push Java through the International Standards Organization (ISO) because it would remain controlled by Sun in its opinion. It later backtracked slightly, saying to would accept the ISO, but would rather Sun had less influence. Microware, QNX and Wind River have also licensed Sun’s PersonalJava and EmbeddedJava, in fact Microware was one of the companies Sun brought in to help produce its PersonalJava embedded JVM. Microsoft Corp was the first company to license HP’s Java.
