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He doesn't see these platforms as competitors per se, in terms of growth, but he believes that all these platforms will equally evolve in the future in their own ways, because there is no hammer that fits all nails.

Well, I'd like to think he's right there. Sun's message to their customers is undoubtedly confusing, but if they think it'll work then we'll just have to see.

He believes that there is no danger of Red Hat going very far within the Enterprise with this new project because of several reasons, including the fact that it would be a "tough sell" for established customers of the Java platform including Samsung, Nokia and Google.

If it comes integrated with the platform and fully supported by Red Hat as a package, then it will certainly work. That's why vendors like JBoss have recently attacked Red Hat because of their use of Jonas - they're very worried about what will happen. Jonas is something that quite clearly works and is a J2EE implementation that is going to have a lot of expensive Java vendors very worried. The Classpath implementation of Java needs some work, but Red Hat are obviously committed to it.

In fact, he fears that IBM is the one that would have the most trouble from the whole Red Hat-Java deal, because as they use Red Hat for their POWER projects, using a non-certified Java version could create potential runtime problems.

No. IBM have their own JRE, JDK and Java software so they don't need to worry. Besides, IBM have made no attempt to deny that they'd like to see a completely open source implementation of core Java. I think Sun's attempts to try and de-stabilise the relationships Red Hat has will fall flat. There's more money to be made out of Sun for IBM than Red Hat.

With over 2 billion devices worldwide running Java Sun is 100% committed to ensuring that anything 'stamped' Java is compatible. Folks really depend on that assurance.

Well, I agree with him there. That's something Java and it's process has brought, and there's no point in trying to deny it. There's been downsides, but that's been a plus.

Sun does seem to have a beef with Red Hat; that much was obvious from our conversation.

Because they're very worried, that's why.

He believes that Red Hat locks Enterprise customers in, just like Microsoft does, by steadily moving away from the LSB

Microsoft locks in through technology. Red Hat simply cannot do that so his logic doesn't tally. The two just don't compare.

by patching and forking code (including using a very non-standard Linux kernel) and so applications get certified or only work in the Red Hat codebase and no other Linux distro.

Ahem. I don't see Sun making any efforts to get Oracle to certify for Debian or anything else, and I don't see much of Sun's middleware certified for anything else either. Anyway, Red Hat's kernels are freely available as per the terms of the GPL so this is obviously a concept he has great difficulty in comprehending.

Such an example is Oracle, where they do not support any Linux distro other than Red Hat-based ones.

Wrong. They support Suse, but it is impossible for them to support everything. You can certainly run Oracle on a Debian or Gentoo distribution, as I've done so.

Jonathan believes that Red Hat, by differentiating the code so much, has created its own incompatible platform, and is therefore virtually pushing customers to continue use Red Hat instead of Debian or Gentoo or other.

Well yer, they would be but the fact remains that Red Hat uses GPLd software for everything as much as they can. Other distributions can use and contribute to that software without any fear or restrictions. We don't think we'll be able to say the same with Open Solaris I'm afraid.