OK, very late in the day, here's my take on the apparent Sun / Microsoft settlement.
I think only good can come of this, A litigation fueled development arena can only hurt (and god knows theres enough of it around without MSFT and Sun ckubbing eachother. Also, the two major players in the Enterprise arena are Java and Microsoft . Now Sun have lost the edge in Java to IBM and BEA and maybe this deal will put them more in the forefront of Java technology again. For Microsoft, Sun coming fully on board in terms of interop is a big thing - they hold the key to Java in an legal sense if not in spirit over the last few years.
My hope for the reconcilliation is that Microsoft and Sun work together to make sure interop between the two environments ceases to be an issue that we as developers have to get involved in the plumbing and leaves us to concentrate on the problem domain not technology interop.
Sadly the cyinic in me forsees things not working out as we, as developers, would have hoped.