The industry-sponsored UK Java Forum was launched at the UK’s Networks 97 show, with the backing of nine like-minded Java- interested vendors, and Microsoft Corp. The Java Forum is to be a salon for UK software developers to exchange ideas and receive technical support from these vendors. The overall aim is to advance Java in the UK as a practical application development language. The Java Forum will be funded for one year by it’s sponsors, Sun Microsystems Inc, IBM Corp, Microsoft, Netscape Communications Corp, Lotus Development Corp, Novell Inc, Oracle Corp and Symantec Corp. Membership will be free until January, and afterwards a #600 yearly fee will be charged for companies or developers, which will completely fund the forum. The Java Forum is part of The Research Group Ltd’s developer forums, which include Windows NT and Lotus Notes forums. While the sponsors talked of Java being an ideal cross-platform language, Microsoft Corp’s Internet Tools Manager, Mike Pryke-Smith, expounded the virtues of Microsoft’s proprietary JDirect Java virtual machine extension. JDirect enables Java access to Win32 APIs, and would defeat other vendors hopes for Java’s complete operating system independence. IBM’s Simon Phipps, Java Program manager, described JDirect as Microsoft’s third attempt to bastardize Java, that will also fail. The first attempt was the promotion of ActiveX over Java, and the second was the company’s promotion of its Application Foundation Classes(CI No 3092).
