Liberate to Major on Java, but It's Not for Everyone.

Liberate Technologies Inc, the company that until two days ago was known as Network Computer Inc, has confirmed to us that the company has not used Java in any of its consumer products before and has only used it in its network computer administration server. The company made an announcement this week that from now on Java, in a variety of shapes and sizes, would be at the heart of its future software development. However, Larsen says Liberate will not force Java down the throats of customers as not all of them will require it. Many can and will make do fine with the usual combination of HTML and JavaScript.

Liberate produces internet access software to run in a variety of non-PC devices, including set-top boxes, PDAs and NCs. Java author Sun Microsystems Inc was one of 11 investors that contributed to a $50m mezzanine round that was also announced this week.

Liberate product line manager Peter Larsen says the company plans to use the PersonalJava application environment in a plug-in role, as it doesn't want to get tied down to any particular real- time operating system by integrating it too tightly. At present Liberate's software - the TV Navigator, NC Navigator and eNavigator clients run on a variety of RTOS', including Wind River's VxWorks; PowerTV's OS, which is a company controlled by Scientific-Atlanta Inc; Vertex, the OS on some General Instrument boxes; Integrated Systems Inc's pSoS and the embedded operating systems of NEC Corp and Fujitsu Ltd.

One operating system that Liberate has no plans to support for now is Windows CE, says Larsen. Microsoft's platform is seen as Liberate's major competitor and the commitment to Java highlights the differences between the two approaches still further.