Have they asked any Psychologists? (Score 1)

Depending on their pay scale, they will probably initially draw more people into open source development. However, these people are motivated only by the money, which in the end is a very weak form of motivation. Hopefully, some will learn to do it for the more meaningful reasons, but if they don't, you can bet they will drop this like Windows Vista as soon as the money slows down, or they find a job that pays better for their time. Also, they do run some risk of experts who are already working on it becoming motivated only by the money as well. The top architects will surely not be fully compensated for what their work is worth, and when they see the comparison, studies have shown that there is a large likelihood that they too will slow down the pace of their contributions. Sun has to be careful to keep this only a secondary motivation to the more meaningful reasons that open source developers have devoted years to. However, if they are doing it to show their gratitude in some way, it may well be very effective. Per usual, there are more factors to consider than just the most obvious ones for making the decision.