With Exception Of Sun Microsystems, Industry Vendors Mum On Ruling

Sun, however, publicly decried the ruling and said it would continue its efforts to take Microsoft to task over anti-competitive behavior.

Spokespersons for Oracle, BEA Systems, Cisco Systems and 3Com all declined to comment on the ruling, while officials for Veritas, Hewlett-Packard and IBM could not be reached for comment by press time.

Linux vendor Red Hat plans to issue a statement about the ruling on Monday, said a spokeswoman for the Raleigh, N.C.-based company.

In a statement, Michael Morris, Sun's special counsel, said the ruling was a blow to promoting innovation and fair competition among industry vendors.

"Choice, innovation and competition form the foundation of the technology industry," Morris said. "Today's ruling does little to advance these principles or to protect the millions of developers and businesses that want an open marketplace."

Further, Morris said that Microsoft has shown little attempt to comply with requirements already mandated by the settlement and that the ruling will be "ineffective in curbing Microsoft's monopolistic and anti-competitive practices" and "difficult to enforce, quite apart from the propriety of having Microsoft's own board members be the first line of compliance enforcement."

Morris also said that Sun executives hope the states appeal Friday's decision and that Sun plans to forge ahead with its own civil case against Microsoft, as well as help the European Commission in its own proceedings against the software giant.

"We will also continue to pursue our civil case and to cooperate with the European Commission's case against Microsoft to ensure that the company does not continue to use its monopoly position to become the gatekeeper of the Internet," Morris said.