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I thought this was going to be about X11 ...

• hga 16y ago
  So did I! And the answer for that is simple: it was free, James Gosling's NeWS cost money (and not a small amount). And I'm sure this has more than a little to do with the success of Java, specifically the team delivering an ultimatum before launch that it would be free or they would leave (easy enough to make, since if it wasn't it would have died).