However, he thinks vendors would move quickly to embrace the latest versions of the langue.

Frank Enfanto, vice president of health care services system delivery at Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Massachusetts, said he doubts that the announcement will lead to Sun altering its research and development efforts around the language. Most large enterprise still would buy support from Sun, even if the language was released to open source, he added.

"When they open-source something, you still have to buy some sort of support, otherwise you are on your own,"he said. "You can't run a company without the support."