US Votes On Sun's Standards Submission

June 5, 1997 - At part of today's ISO/IEC JTC-1 US TAG meeting in Fairfax, VA, the group's 29 voting members considered Sun Microsystems Inc.'s application to become a recognized Publicly Available Specification (PAS) submitter.

The US group voted "No, with comments." This outcome represents the US TAG's current position on Sun's PAS application. The US TAG's position is subject to change if Sun can adequately address the issues raised in the comments.

The comments centered around trademarking of the Java name, future maintenance of the Java standard, and what technologies Sun would submit into the process.

We intend to work closely with JTC-1 to best understand the process for an appropriate response. Once we have carefully reviewed the comments we will follow JTC-1's process and feel confident that Sun can satisfactorily address the issues that the US TAG raised.

Sun would like to thank the members of the US TAG for their careful review and consideration of our application.

To put today's events in context, the US vote is one part of a larger international process that is being guided by ISO/IEC JTC-1's National Member bodies in 30 countries. During the next month, each country's organization will be voting on Sun's application. The deadline for each country to cast its vote is July 14, 1997. Once the international voting is concluded, JTC-1's Executive Secretariat will tabulate the votes and comments and respond to Sun.

Sun believes that the PASS process is the fastest and most effective method of transposing its Java specifications into international standards will well serve to protect large investment in Java that has already been made by both the industry and the international marketplace.