cjf-
Things are in fact changing at Sun. Take a look at this and this and this. Sun has been oscilating a great deal on Linux, but since the acquisition of Cobalt networks, they have been leaning more and more towards Linux. Business is Business, you know. People are realizing the value of Linux, and waking up to it. And, If I were to make a prediction, since the StarOffice license is changing to be free on only OSs that Sun makes, they probably will change it again to include Linux at some point down the road.
We may in fact see a return to the "hacker" mentality that prevailed throughout the company through much of its early years.
Just my 2 cents on the issue.
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E-Bitch
Tempora Mutantur Nos et Mutamur in Illis
"The Times are Changed Even as We are Changed in Them"
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Business is Business, you know.
Consider the first article you linked to titled "Sun Broadens Support for Linux" and dated February 7th, 2002. Now read this dated February 20th, 2002. What's wrong with that picture? They're "broadening" their support for Linux alright, but as soon as there's the slightest hint its expanding into areas that could hurt their bottom line, they try to bash it back down.
Sun wants to be seen as a nice open source friendly company, but in reality they are very far from it. As the article I previously linked to says:
Sun loves to have Kodak moments with some parts of the open source community -- most notably, Apache -- who increasingly feel used and abused
Apache's stance on the JSPA states "The JSPA must require that a JSR spec license cannot prohibit a compatible independent open source (Apache-style license minimum) implementation of a JSR." Which I fully agree with. Their current license is most likely legally indefensible, and definately is not what I would call "supporting open source."
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