Sun, a player in the Novell - Microsoft agreement?

A bit of interesting speculation about the implications of Sun's different options to Open Source Java and how their choice effects the Novell - Microsoft agreement:

Bradley Kuhn rips Microsoft’s patent pledge to shreds. But should we be surprised?
Will Sun blow up the Microsoft/Novell deal to Red Hat’s benefit?

Well, this is interesting.

Note this was published before Sun choose to use GPL to Open Source Java. The authors of the articles argue that the ideas that underpin .Net lived in Java before Microsoft created .Net. If so the ultimate IP owners may be Sun not Microsoft. Also, by using the GPL to open source Java they create immediate and long term competition for both .Net and Mono. Now that Java is open sourced using the same model as the Linux kernel it will not take long to fully integrated Java into Linux and its development efforts.