InfoWorld: An Apache official at the EclipseCon conference the other day said that eventually all software would be free, with vendors selling services. Do you agree?

Johnson: I don't think we'll ever get to the position where all software is free. I think that there will always be market sectors where different forces apply, but I think there is an extremely powerful force towards moving in that direction. So I think that within a few years, the vast majority of software will be in that case, in that situation.

InfoWorld: What is your impression of Microsoft .Net technologies?

Johnson: I think .Net is a credible platform. It is very serious competition for enterprise Java technology. There's a number of interesting things that have been achieved in .Net. So, for example, the ability to run multiple languages on the .Net platform, and also they're doing some very interesting work around DSLs (domain-specific languages) and they are actually doing some very interesting innovation in the C# language itself.