"The open-source community has been hearing reports that you have recently said of Sun Microsystem's strategy "The open-source model is our friend". We're glad to hear that, and Sun's support of OpenOffice.org certainly puts some weight behind the claim. But that support is curiously inconsistent, spotty in ways which suggests that Sun is confused in the way it thinks about and executes its open-source strategy.
"That confusion is evident in another of your quotes. Many of us think you are right on when you say that 'Sun [...] is less threatened by a zero-revenue model for software than just about anybody out there.' We agree that the potential for you in using open-source software as a value multiplier for Sun's hardware business is huge. This wouldn't even be a novel move for Sun; your release of the NFS standards in 1984 was possibly the single most successful market-shaping maneuver in your company's history, and we'd love to help you repeat it..."
