Maybe it's Java's resurrection.

Look, Sun has clearly run out of ideas for Java. Back in the day, the ideas were endless. It was "write once, run anywhere," Java as the universal desktop, Java as the perfect Internet language and, of course, Java as a great loss-leader for selling more Sun servers.

Today, Java is a perfectly respectable language for back-end processes. But all the really interesting ideas come from the people using it. Sun's full attention is directed toward keeping itself above water.

What happens if a lot more people start coming up with ideas for Java? And not just what they can do with Java, but also what they can do within Java? That suddenly becomes possible once Java goes open-source. Then Java can be crammed into places it never fit before. Stretched in ways that weren't possible before. Lightened. Hardened. Repurposed. Reimagined. Refactored. Rebuilt.

And, yes, screwed up. Sure, it'll happen. There will be incompatible versions -- probably lots of them. It's inevitable, once anyone can change the Java source code.