MSNBC news reports that MS is going to retire several of its older products including SQL Server 7, Office XP Developer, Windows 98, and a number of Office 2000-related tools and patches. Click the link below for more details.
Martin LaMonica wrote:Dec. 8 — Microsoft will retire several of its products next week, including Windows 98 and SQL Server 7, to comply with a court order related to its dispute with Sun Microsystems over Java. In a posting to Microsoft’s developer Web site, the company lists several older products that are being phased out and that will no longer be available to customers as of Dec. 15.
MS is blaming Sun for having to do this now, because of the Sun lawsuit that MS lost forcing them to stop using the MS-tweaked java code they previously embeded in these older products.
So, MS says: if we can't f___ with the java code - then we'll just retire the products, and to hell with everyone who still relies on them.
Sun allowed for them to continue supporting the products for well into 2004, but MS likes the accelerated upgrade timetable approach.