Open is Open.

Open is Open.

> if not sheer paranoia

I actually agree with you here (and I'm not saying this to be sarcastic). I don't trust Sun after all the flip-flopping they've gone through in regards to open source and Linux. And it's all right there in Jonathan's blog (if he doesn't speak for the company, I don't know who does). All this change of heart makes me nervous. Others, particularly IBM (note: I don't work for IBM, don't own shares of it, never purchased a computer from them and where I work the whole organisation has zero IBM equipment) have been more straightforward, while still quite openly supporting other (proprietary) things and generally hedging their bets, but without "change of heart" every second day.

I would say that possibly the biggest trust busting factor of all is Java for me. If there ever was a vibrant open source effort, it is around Java (e.g. project Jakarta). Some of the best Java stuff out there is open source. And yet, I cannot find any _valid_ reason for Java to be closed source. I know Sun exectives quoted compatibility, but that is just so easy to achieve through tradmarks, that is completely unbelievable. Unfortunately there is no scientific way (yet) to measure what would happen to the platform if it were open sourced, but I think that mere fact that it would get included as a standard part of evey Linux distribution speaks for itself, not to mention all the JDK bugs that have been outstanding for months (in cases years) being fixed quickly. Why Sun doesn't want that to happen, I don't understand.