Everyone has good things to say about Sun, but let's not forget that they tried to monetize Java (even trying to take money from open-source communities like FreeBSD) long before they were acquired by Oracle.
See me other post:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34125284
>You're right, it was Slowlaris that killed Sun, and Java was meant to be a "Microsoft Killer", not a programming language. [...]
>Sun could never measure up to Microsoft, and McNealy was totally obsessed with fighting them, to the point that Java was not actually a programming language for solving developer's problems per se, but primarily a weapon in his personal vendetta against Microsoft, and Java developers were considered expendable mercenaries in that war, above all else. Everything they did with Java was measured by how much it would harm Microsoft, not help developers. [...]
Maybe Sun would still be around if it was better at monetizing the things it invented. Maybe that would have been a better outcome than Oracle owning all of it.
Should we also be mad at Red Hat for trying to monetize Linux (which they didn’t even invent)?
Keep in mind those were different times, and development tools were one of the things that costed a lot of money.
Microsoft still does a large amount of money off the visual studio tooling.