CIOs with application developers on staff care more about the business value of something than they do about the nuts and bolts of it. So to them, what's your message? Why should they be concerned? I think the positive message for them is [that] the likelihood of access and the growth of an industry that will give them competitive offerings is likely to increase. There [are] just more people accessing the technology, more developers and the likelihood of growing an industry that gives them competitive choice. And so open-source has the capacity of giving IT organizations that increased value. It also has the corollary value of, depending on the products that they buy, they have access to the source code and can better understand the workings of the technology and address issues as they come up if others can't. So it has that associated value as well. But the flip side, of course, is one of the core values of the Java ecosystem is, write once, run anywhere -- compatibility matters. There is a validation and branding exercise that gives you some sense of certainty, and I know CIOs are very interested in that.

Apart from Sun, what platforms and languages out there have taken this path and have forked and delivered this worse-case scenario? What examples out there illustrate your fear? There are certainly different flavors of Linux. If you look at ISVs out there, they will say, 'We certify on this version of Red Hat, but not on SUSE.' So explicitly, when you look at the behavior of ISVs, they are demonstrating that there has been a fracturing in the Linux market. It's very clear; you have to buy a copy of an application not for Linux but for Red Hat or a copy of an application for SUSE. That is indirectly but very clearly an indication of fracturing.

How can you avoid that and still go open-source? Is that basically part and parcel of the open-source process? It is a potential. But in other realms, there isn't the history of compatibility as a priority, as a value -- a whole ecosystem built on that. The other case is there weren't the tools in other realms like Linux to validate compatibility. There is no tool set that will tell you that this Linux is identical to that Linux. There is none. We have built that over the years in Java. We can validate and certify compatibility, enormous test suites that Sun and others have contributed to that we use for the certification process.

You are saying upfront that you are going to open-source Java. But there is a measure of a caveat -- if there is negative feedback from the community that could be a problem with you going forward with the open-source. It's worthy of consideration. But I also made it clear that if there are significant considerations, our default will be to work through them -- it won't be to stop.

So you think this whole issue of forking can be solved in such a manner where you can ultimately bring Java open-source? I think -- of any program, any technology that has the potential for dramatically mitigating the issue -- it would be Java, because of the history of compatibility and the tools we have.