VJ++ had a completely different target market from modern Java / C#: it was the Age of the Desktop, Java was supposed to be the client-side Nirvana of write-once-run-everywhere, and VJ++ was a blatant embrace-and-extinguish play in that sense ("write once, run on Windows only" basically), based on platform-specific UI libs.
C# was developed when the market had changed and Java had become the language of choice for web apps. MS needed a competitor there, and it didn't make sense for their platform lock-in strategies to build anything but MS-specific tech. They couldn't have adopted Java at that point, regardless of lawsuits.
Visual J++ was, at the time, the best implementation of Java as a language integrated with an IDE, UI stack, and runtime that ran on a commonly used OS. If it was "embrace and extinguish" it had considerable merit. It would have completely transformed Windows software development, especially for interactive software.
At the time, Forte and Eclipse were a bog-slow nightmare to use with insane hardware requirements relative to even high-end PCs of that time, and Sun's UI stacks still haven't produced any human-usable software, never mind back then.
I don't always think Microsoft should win IP cases, but Sun destroyed a very worthwhile product and they had no comparable product to protect. It was a purely destructive action.
VJ++ had a completely different target market from modern Java / C#: it was the Age of the Desktop, Java was supposed to be the client-side Nirvana of write-once-run-everywhere, and VJ++ was a blatant embrace-and-extinguish play in that sense ("write once, run on Windows only" basically), based on platform-specific UI libs.
C# was developed when the market had changed and Java had become the language of choice for web apps. MS needed a competitor there, and it didn't make sense for their platform lock-in strategies to build anything but MS-specific tech. They couldn't have adopted Java at that point, regardless of lawsuits.