What does "open-source" mean in the case of Java? Does it mean the same thing to you as open-source Apache or Linux? In general, as I noted, it's a little early to state very clearly what licensing technique we would use, although a strong leaning to an existing, well-practiced licensed is likely what we will do. But without being able to specify the license, I can't answer that question in very great detail.

You released Solaris under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL). Why would you do it differently here? It's as I said: It's the feedback from the community, it's examining what [the] goals are. I'm not sure yet. There is lot of open-source Linux out there under GPL [General Public License], etc., and that also seems to be a very interesting and successful model. I do want to make sure that there is no issue or question about Sun's intent when we go and do this. And so the licensing scheme not only has implications of the constraints of the license itself, but it also tends to impart some sense of industrywide sharing as you use more industry standard licenses. So we are going to be looking at both sides of this.

Both sides meaning what? The implication of your comment in the context of CDDL is that this is a Sun-centric license versus different open-source licenses. So we are going to look at the continuum of licenses that we have used and others have used to figure out what the community wants.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz says he wants the Java code released as soon as possible. What does as soon as possible mean to you? No sooner than what I implied. We will do [it] no sooner than what I've implied; we will do it no sooner than when we can kind of measure what the community needs. Under those constraints, as soon as possible is accurate.

Some analysts believe you need to open up Java to ward off competitive threats, because within the process it's now under, it just doesn't innovate quick enough. And that's the driving motivation for going to open-source. I don't think so. It is likely that in open-sourcing or completing the open-sourcing of Java, to be fair, so much of Java has been opened-sourced already. Java EE [Enterprise Edition], all the tools, etc. It's important to clarify that this is not a black-and-white situation. We have done a great deal in Java to open-source it, and this is the last bit, the SE [Standard Edition] bit that we're talking about here. It's hardly like this is new or precedent -- and in that regard, I think people are making a much bigger story out of this than need be. The key reason we want to do this is to get Java in more people's hands. There are organizations and businesses that can only accept open-source technology given certain licensing models and certain restrictions or the lack thereof, and this is about access and community scale more than innovation. Now, that said, certainly the more people who are using Java and able to amend Java, doubtlessly the rate of innovation will change. But we haven't in general gotten feedback from developers, from end users, from major corporations, that Java is stagnating. We don't have an innovation issue. In fact, sometimes we're told that people cannot digest the new releases, the rate of change, of software that comes out from the Java process.