Will Java and Flex be a good combination in the future?

Friday the 25th James Ward and Serge Jespers give a preview of the releases of Flex 3, AIR and BlaseDS. I am asked by the usergroup to think about a presentation of a java/flex site. That was not hard because I saw a brilliant presentation of the new Parleys site at JavaPolis in Antwerp. So, I asked Stephan Jansen to present his new site in Amsterdam. Unfortunately Stephan can't make it the 25th but he asked me to present his site. Off course I am willing to do so but working on this presentation it made me think about the Adobe Flex and Java. Why is Flex the tool to be for developing RIA's with Java, can I defend that? How do you explain what Java is to someone who is not familiar with computerprogramming? On the blog of Joshua Marinacci there is a "contest" because he is struggling with that same question. Many technical answer are given but that isn't what you want to tell. So far I liked the explanation : Java is a computer, implemented entirely in software. The Java computer provides an operating system (JVM), system libraries (JRE), and a human-readable language (Java) that can be compiled to run processes on it's operating system. Because it is implemented in software, the Java computer can be embedded within other computers like a PC, cell phone, BlueRay player or toaster. Still I think this answer is too technical because what are system libraries, but ok. It explains it in a way that my son understands it but it is confusing for my wife. Suppose I have to explain Flex in the same way, what will it be? Adobe Flex is a collection of technologies released by Adobe Systems for the development and deployment of cross platform, rich Internet applications based on the proprietary Adobe Flash platform. The initial release in March 2004 by Macromedia included a software development kit, an IDE, and a J2EE integration application known as Flex Data Services. (source Wikipedia) In 2007 Adobe made the right decision towards the Java community by making Flex open source. By that time there was Flex 2 which made it easier for Java developers to make RIA's. The IDE (Flexbuilder or eclipse plugin) however remained commercial and I am wondering how long that will be. Flexbuilder is based on Eclipse, an open source project started by IBM, for making J2EE applications. Eclipse is free. Sun's reaction on Flex was slow but after the release of Silverlight by Microsoft, Sun reacted with JavaFX. Is that too late? Flex is based on the proven technology of Flash, Flashplayer is installed at 98% of all browsers and Flex is releasing Flex 3. Adobe is in the lead. Silverlight will not be used by Java developers and up till know Sun has not been able to make a stable version of JavaFX. For many Java developers that is a shame I guess because Java developers will have a preference for Sun. In the battle of obtaining the Java developers for making RIA's Sun made a good move by taking over MySQL, a database that is already being used a lot by developers and it's free. The development tool for JavaFX is integrated in Netbeans and in Eclipse. But more important, the IDE is free. If Adobe is not responding to this, the Java development community will switch to Sun. I hope this will not happen because it this point of time Flex is way ahead of JavaFX, I haven't seen a good working sample for JavaFX live and I visited 3 seminars to do so, and with the help of the community Flex can evolve into a defacto standard. Let see what the battle between Sun and Adobe will bring us. If you know, let me know.