I have hope that Java will be Open Sourced in the not too distant future. Sun are edging towards accepting this idea. If they don't they will ultimately loose out to Mono (as long as Mono doesn't run into Patent issues).
Apart from some kind of mindshare thing, I don't get why "open sourced" Java is needed.
Mostly because distros won't ship it because of it's license. Not even in the "non-free" sections. If java wants to increase it's market share it's going to have to become easier to distribute. At the moment I can't get deb's for java legitimately because their license won't allow redistribution: Sun grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited license without license fees to reproduce and use internally Software complete and unmodified for the sole purpose of running Programs. This means installing the sun jvm under Linux is a PIA. It's not intergrated with the package management, it's not automatically upgraded for me. Nor is it "integrated" with the OS. the number of hoops you have to jump through to get .class or .jar files to run the jvm when executed is astronomical. If I use the Free JVM's I can "apt-get install" them, they set themselves up with binfmt_misc properly, and set up the classpath appropriately. When I do my updates, new versions are installed properly. Suddenly it's very very easy to use, except that they barely meet java 1.0. Except I can't do this with Sun's VM. Now this doesn't necessarily require it to be open sourced, but a more liberal license would (IMHO) greatly improve it's uptake in the community.