According to News.com, the CEO of Sun Microsystems recently told the Singapore press:
> Sun ONE runs on every system and processor. .NET runs only on Windows. It’s mankind versus Microsoft. .NET is a joke.
Wow, you can practically smell the desperation, can’t you?
First, Sun ONE hardly runs on “every system and processor”. For example, the Sun ONE Application Server runs only on Solaris, Windows, and Red Hat Linux. Sun supports Windows because they have to, but conspicuously **doesn’t** support Mac OS X Server because they’re (justifiably) afraid of Apple’s Xserve eating into their Cobalt server business.
Second, although Microsoft’s first commercial implementations of .NET (not surprisingly) run on Windows on Windows CE, their shared source version of the .NET core also runs on FreeBSD and Mac OS 10.2. As you heard here first, a future version of Virtual PC will inevitably include native support for .NET on Mac OS X. Last but not least, .NET also works on Linux (x86 and PowerPC), StrongARM and SPARC thanks to the work of the fine folks on the open source Mono and DotGNU projects.
Third, the “it’s mankind vs. Microsoft” thing. Well, that part is true.
Fourth, if Scott really thinks .NET is a joke, then he just doesn’t understand it.
> It’s difficult for me to defeat Microsoft. Microsoft has a lot of cash in hand.
Or maybe he does.
* [News.com story](http://news.com.com/2100-1012-993226.html)