Nobody has mentioned that c was proprietary until richard stallman wrote gcc in 1987, c is a great for system programming. Just because something is originally proprietary does not mean its technically rubbish, there are plenty of merits in java escially for new programmers or anyone who wants to get a program going very quickly. Gcj at the moment can do most tasks apart from swing gui, i believe Awt is well supported.
To further my position, without the proprietary(it was licenced on a liberal account at the time) UNIX created in bell labs, they would possibly not be linux. Miguel de Icaza started implemening mono as he too saw technical advantages in .net, he is freeing the language in my opinion. Technology is just as important as polictics, hopefully i am well understood -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
