Sun's Moment in the Spotlight

I think the results of this contest show that Sun has been rewarded by developers for the effort they have put into their products over the past year. Why did they win? A few years back, Sun set out a product roadmap for developers that called for a range of products and technologies to match the diverse needs of different developer constituencies. Over the last year, Sun has delivered on this vision. By expanding its product line with brand new offerings like Java Studio Creator and stepping up its commitment to the NetBeans open source project, the creator of Java has brought to market a broad and innovative line of products.

In addition, as the steward of Java, Sun deserves credit for bringing two blockbuster releases of the Java platform to fruition: J2SE 5.0 and J2EE 1.4.

Sun is also pioneering a new development model, moving to subscription based pricing for tools, reasoning that developers need more than just good tools to work with; they need support, tutorials, examples, etc.