More Sun news: Sun promises to open-source Java

[Pete Ryland]

On Thu, May 18, 2006 at 01:00:51 +1000, Alexander Jacob Tsykin wrote:
> On Thursday 18 May 2006 00:00, Derek Broughton wrote:
> >
> > What?  Is it April 1 already?
> >
> > I'll be thrilled if it happens, but I'm not holding my breath.
> I wouldn't be that surprised if they did, although they probably would take a 
> while to do so. It makes compelling economic sense for Sun to Open source 
> Java.
> 1. Whenthey open sourced Solaris their profit jumped significantly
> 2. User base would increase, and if home users are using it for free, they 
> don't care, because these are not people who would have payed anyway, but 
> they might bring it to their workplace if they know it and are comfortable 
> with it = more money
> 3. Why not? They have nothing to lose and it would endear them to the Open 
> Source community, who they might want something from in the future
> 4. There are those who will not use any program which is not open source

You seem to have missed the obvious advantage:

The whole world can now improve on it and maybe even make it work, and port
it to other platforms; they may actually acheive their goal of write once,
run anywhere!

Note also that this change has come just weeks after a change of leadership
at the company, which might be related news.

Pete