[dredmorbius]

> Which raises an interesting question - how do you make money on a platform like this?

Professional services. Hardware sales. Turnkey solutions (you want to support industry X using Java? ...). Development tools (to the extent not provided by third-parties). Certification/compliance. Associated products (nice Java app you've got there, need a database to go with it?).

Here's a thing: making money off of software by itself is hard. One of the lost messages in the recent trash-talking of Microsoft is that the fall of the House of Redmond also means the fall of software as a standalone, unit-sold, high-value product. Nobody but nobody else operates this way, certainly none of the current tech leaders: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon. Two sell ads, two sell things. None sells software.