FILED: December 29, 1998

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

     The court hereby orders that the parties immediately schedule a settlement conference before Magistrate Judge Edward Infante or a settlement conference or mediation before some other mutually selected individual. The court believes that such a session could be productive since the parties have now received the court's preliminary injunction rulings and because, despite their differences, the TLDA shows that both parties recognize that there are times when developers need to call native code.

     Both parties have developed native interfaces (JNI and RNI) that specify how the native code interacts with the virtual machine. Native code will not run on all platforms, but Sun's JNI was designed to allow native code to run on any virtual machine on a given platform and to minimize the effort to port the native code to another platform.

     Microsoft has recognized that there will be times when the developer will want to use native functionality already built into the platform to gain more efficient performance using less code. Thus, for example, J/Direct allows a programmer to use Windows functions directly without writing a native code intermediary. The resulting class file, however, will not run on any virtual machine other than Microsoft's.

     Microsoft's use of J/Direct may result in a use of Java antithetical to the universality contemplated by Sun for Java but Sun acknowledges that native code is necessary on occasion. The parties might benefit, however, from broadening Microsoft's efforts and thereby achieving a standardized method for invoking functions built into the platform being used.

     The parties could probably achieve a more workable resolution to their dispute than a court could order. The parties might want to consider in connection with a settlement conference or mediation the development of a specification of platform-specific function invocation for Java that achieves Sun's goal of universality and Microsoft's goal of more efficient performance and ease of coding. If the parties choose a judicial office to facilitate a settlement conference or mediation, a technical consultant would probably be of assistance. The services of the current consultant chosen by the parties to assist the court in understanding technical issues could assist the settlement officer or mediator if both parties so desire and consent in writing.

DATED: 12/29/98

__________________________________             RONALD M. WHYTE             United States District Judge