Does Java make money for Sun?
Does Adobe AIR and Flex make money for Adobe ?
Does Microsoft Silverlight make money for Microsoft ?
Does Oracle Developer Edition make money for Oracle ?
Does IBM Eclipse make money for IBM ?
Does Google Maps make money for Google ?
Does Yahoo YUI make money for Yahoo ?
People who ask such questions probably think people buy million dollar Sparc systems and then put a few Perl scripts on them. Without Java, Sun is Apple without OS X. Java makes Sun relevant in the enterprise. Anyone who doesn't understand this simple fact should never create a business.
With Java, Sun doesn't need to pitch business. The business comes to them. This is why Sun now owns MySQL. It's called marked reach. If Sun only plays the hardware game, then they will become the next Cray, SGI or DEC.
People find this hard to believe, but Apple is really a software company.