Giving things away is not the same as open source. Java was closed source until 2006. Sun released the Java runtime and class library for no charge but not the

Giving things away is not the same as open source. Java was closed source until 2006. Sun released the Java runtime and class library for no charge but not the source. The class library's interfaces were public as was the JVM specification so there were open source Java implementations like Kaffe, gcj, and the GNU classpath before Sun open sourced Java proper. Originally Sun released the JRE (on PC/Mac/etc) at no charge but charged for licenses elsewhere. With the release of Java 1.2 (J2SE) Sun charged for releases of J2ME on devices and J2EE products like application servers. Sun wanted to get the Java runtime spread as widely as possible to make it the platform to develop stuff on. The idea was to get stuff written in Java and then deployment was just embedding a class file (later a jar) in a web page.