I asked BEA's CEO if the relationship between his company and Sun had changed any since Sun started bundling its own application server with Solaris (Sun also bundles BEA's Weblogic with some Solaris servers). He said, “If I thought a hardware company could make good software, I could just put my feet up on my desk and relax.” He also said that he had tried to talk Scott McNealy out of putting so much energy into the Sun ONE products, to no avail.

But he said the relationship hadn't changed, and that things were great with Sun. However, in an answer to a seperate question, he revealed that 20% of BEA's license sales were for the Linux platform now. And it wasn't a Sun exec doing a keynote on the first day; it was Carly Fiorina.