Not XUL, Flash.

One other point: the article suggests Sun adopt Mozilla’s XUL rich client language to combat Microsoft’s XAML. There’s also mention of SVG and SMIL. If these two standards were better supported, then that would certainly be an option. However, they aren’t and there’s a better option anyway—Flash. Yep, Macromedia Flash. Unlike XUL, SVG or SMIL, Flash is already installed on almost 95% of all browsers. Moreover, the SWF spec (the Flash file format) is open. While it’s not perfect (what is?), Flash has delivered many of the promises Java applets and other technologies tried and failed at. Moreover, Macromedia is no stranger to Java and J2EE (check out JRun) and already has the technology in place (see Flash Remoting). So, IMHO, better support of Flash + Java by all interested parties is the best option for those looking to fend off .NET.