This is interesting...

slashdot is reporting on a Cringely opinion piece. The upshot of Cringely's piece - Sun is doomed:

Even Java is becoming superfluous. Java is the Dan Marino of software. Just as the former Dolphins quarterback, Java affected the world so much that history cannot be written without its mention. But nonetheless, neither Java nor Dan ever won the big one. So here is the prognosis. Sun lost $2 billion last year and will probably lose another $2 billion this year. At that rate, the company has at most five years to live. They have just renewed a commitment to the Solaris operating system, which is no longer really viable from an economic standpoint. I know, I know, Solaris users love Solaris, but they don't love Solaris prices. And with a falling market share, Sun can't afford to make Solaris any cheaper. Sun is having the same problem in hardware where their SPARC architecture is falling behind, and -- worse still -- has lost nearly all of its manufacturing support in Japan. Both Solaris and SPARC will absorb vast sums in the coming years and yield absolutely no increase in Sun's market share as a result.

There's more in the piece, but those posted losses are the interesting part. No company can sustain those sorts of losses for long, and if that trend continues, I give Sun a lot less than 5 years. The interesting part will be th expression on the faces of all the Java true believers when they realize that the JCP is merely a nicety - and that Sun falling will make for changes in the Java world. Even if it gets Open Sourced - hello, code forks.