Alan Williamson and Simon Phipps are playing a bit of “point-counterpoint” on the profitability of open source. What's interesting here is that Simon, the Sun insider, is the one taking the pro-open source position. [Of course, Simon has been taking that position for quite some time, so it's not really that interesting. ]

I've had a bit of debate with some others over this issue myself. How, one friend asked, can Sun take Java (for example) open source when Jonathan Schwartz is shifting its whole business model toward software?

As Simon says (no pun intended), that question is based on confusion between a development methodology and a business model. Sun owns more than just Java–it owns a stack of software and services built upon Java. The Java language development process is a money-losing effort for Sun–it makes all its money off of the technology that is built on top of that language. So, if Sun were to pull, say, a

Over on Sun's Java.net “weblogs” (talk about embracing and extending), Richard Gabriel talks about a recent visit to Sun by Larry Lessig and the “three bears” of intellectual property as they relate to Java…or as Gabriel refers to it, “a fictional…language called *a*a.”

Lessig suggested that the laws of intellectual property would force “*a*a” to one of two extremes–either open source, where its reach could be greatly expanded but the risk of it being “hijacked” or “embraced and extended” [Gabriel's links, not mine :-)]; or being kept under the control of Sun (whoops, *u*), and thus maximizing its integrity but limiting its potential reach. The third route, or the “just right” that Lessig (and Gabriel, by proxy) endorsed was one where the language was handed over to a “conservancy”, a la The Creative Commons licensing approach–much like what Dave Winer just did with RSS 2.0.

I suspect that Sun will have to take Lessig's advice, or be forced to take Java open-source via some other licensing scheme soon. And I've spoken with enough people who've got some insight to the workings of Sun to be confident that they're certainly already pointed in that direction. Certainly, they've been embracing open source for a while.

The main question is whether they go with a “traditional” open source license or the Creative Commons approach–turning, say, the Java Community Process into , say, an independent, jointly-held (with the other Java contributors) intellectual property holding corporation , something I said they should do nearly 4 years ago when I was at Java Pro. (Unfortunately, that opinion is hidden behind a pay-to-read firewall at DevX.)

Unless they do, Java's not going anywhere. Many of the major contributors to the Java code base are reluctant to cough up more of their hard work to add to Sun's bottom line; for Java to explode into the mobile market and other spaces where Sun has no current clout, it really needs happy (and unfettered) partners to make it happen. Microsoft is already moving in a crushing fashion into the wireless market, making some sort of Java “glasnost” an even more urgent requirement.

But then there's that damn lawsuit…and there's the