In a recent weblog I highlighted Sun's odd status in the industry's evolution to free software. I pointed out there that Sun has a verbally ambivalent and even fearful attitude toward free software, and that they still take strong actions in support of it, including their heavy investment in GNOME and their choice to release the overwhelming bulk of StarOffice as the open source OpenOffice.org. You can't always get the best information about a trend by scrutinizing the statements of a corporate executive; like politicians, executives sometimes have to say one thing while doing another. Sometimes they have to take a step in one direction in order to balance a more significant step in the opposite direction. I believe Sun is wedded to proprietary software and will lag behind many other companies in adopting free software, but they can still make significant steps toward the latter.