[Physicist]

If they go, who maintains that stuff, not to mention enhancing it for the future?

Whoever buys it from Sun's shareholders. What do you think Microsoft (or IBM, or HP, or Hitachi, or Nokia, or...) would be willing to pay to steer Java (and its huge programming community) in exactly the direction they want it to go?

Prediction: if Sun really gets into trouble, it will avoid bankruptcy by selling off its Java division.

[IronJack]

Does Sun actually OWN Java? It must be difficult since the class packages are open to anyone to see on Sun's site.

But there must be some pretty substantial code in the javac and JRE to make the language platform independent. I guess maybe that's what Sun "owns."