IW: I guess there's kind of a trend toward putting the virtual machine on other languages.

MM: Yes, and I think that's a great idea. Well, I think what you're saying is there's a trend toward opening up the JVMs (Java Virtual Machines) to make it easier to support other languages. And I think that's a great idea.

IW: Why?

MM: Because the programmers want more than one language, but there's so much work and talent that's been invested in the runtime infrastructure that's part of the Java platform, that reinventing all of that technology for another language doesn't make any sense. You want to have a particular problem, which can be expressed more easily in a language other than Java, that's great. But you don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. I mean you still want to be able to use this highly-tuned and mature runtime platform from companies like BEA and IBM and JBoss and Oracle that have spent years perfecting this middleware infrastructure for Web applications. You don't want to throw that out just because you want [to] program in another language.

IW: How much money would you estimate is being generated by Eclipse-based software or is it still the main attraction to Eclipse is it's all free?