James Gosling :

And the Apache folks were very angry at us for picking GPL. But we had to pick something. If we'd picked the Apache license, the GPL crowd would be upset with us.

No, Apache isn't "angry" - it's Sun's IP and they can license it as they choose. We believe that people should have the freedom to license their own IP as they see fit. (That's not what the GPL says, btw).

Also, lets be clear - Sun has already picked more than one license. Sun picked the GPL+ClasspathException for the OpenJDK project, but since Sun will maintain copyright over the whole codebase, Sun will be re-licensing the codebase under other licenses for their customers and other purposes. So, Sun could *also* license under the Apache License as well and not invoke the wrath of the "GPL crowd". I'm guessing, rather, that Sun simply doesn't want to because it loses control.