After all, like professor Wirth once said, P. T. Barnum was right. It's not reasonable to bet your company on the premise either Microsoft or Oracle will have a sudden change of mind and start playing by the rules.
It's not reasonable to bet a dollar on that ludicrous idea.
> Anyone leaving Java because of Oracle is not going to .Net.
I agree that folks who abandon Java because of Oracle's presence are unlikely to embrace Microsoft, but that doesn't mean that .Net won't continue to erode Java's market share.
Specifically, consider the many shops that employ both Java and .Net. In those environments, I could see .Net's adoption accelerating due to the perception of strife within the Java community: James Gosling and Tim Bray both leaving Oracle, Jonathan Schwartz pitching litigation over Java patents as a revenue stream, the subsequent lawsuit against Google, the OpenSolaris and OpenOffice.org votes of no confidence and subsequent forks, Apache attempting to throw a wrench into the JCP... that's not the picture of a healthy ecosystem.
So it's not that the enterprises will see Oracle and flee, but that they'll see the turmoil and litigation, reason that C# and Java are similar enough, and opt for the more peaceful of the two, at least for new development.
Anyone leaving Java because of Oracle is not going to .Net.
> The C# developers I know really do seem to enjoy the language and associated tooling, and it's very well established in the enterprise.
Doesn't matter. If you are leaving Java because of Oracle, then you don't care about the tooling. Moving to .Net will just move you to another vendor those guys have spendt the last years moving away from.