Most distributions provide their users with a whole set of alternatives, from the basic desktop environments to the full chain of tools and applications, usually not very well integrated.

JDS and Ximian Desktop (XD2) are the only two alternatives I know, that try to concentrate on one chain of tools, and integrate them tightly.

Such diversity and choise have always been important priciples for the free/open source software community, but commercial companies have a different focus on this. They want one standardised, integrated environment and not a loose set of tools. (They even want to lock down their employees desktops, a worst case for many OSS folks.) Companies also want reliable and predictable support, and they are willing to pay for all that.

So providing a tightly integrated desktop for companies looks like a good opportunity to earn money with Open Source Software.
And both JDS and XD2 are available as commercial products with support.

With these financial interests in mind, it becomes much less surprising, when Sun and Ximian get arguing about some parts of their standard desktop.

From what I've heard, a major problem seems to be connectivity to Evolution, and Ximian being unwilling or unable(?) to support their Exchange connector on JDS. Even if both companies use the same sources, the binary-only Exchange connector is not compatible with JDS's evolution.

So it makes sense from Sun's point of view not to rely on Ximian, but to write their own product.

Besides those political reasons, I don't know many people which really like Evolution and prefer it over all the other alternatives. Most see it - as I do - as a bloated and unstable piece of software. I prefer Mozilla Mail+Calendar and even a Java calendar client could be the better alternative to Evolution for me.

So if Havoc complains about Evolution not getting the most popular tool for it's purpose, he probably can't do anything about the Sun/Ximian issue. But he can listen carefully to all the people's arguments against Evolution and try to fix that.