Chris Blizzard has a great post about the lost potential of Java due to the fact that it uses a proprietary license.
Java’s not open source. Everyone knows it. Sun thinks the current situation is good enough. Scott Dietzen (ex-CTO of BEA) doesn’t think so. Peter Yared doesn’t think so. So instead of just giving reasons of why they should do it, let’s instead talk about the cost of them not doing it. I want to talk about the opportunity costs of them not open sourcing Java. Those things that are clearly measurable as things that were missed because Java wasn’t open source.