Monday November 13, 2006

Java ME, SE and EE: Open Source, Open Source and, yes Open Source

We've been climbing this particular mountain for a number of years now (since I was a small child, it seems). Many have been impatient for us to reach the top for a quite some time. Our bosses passed us the flag to plant at JavaOne. We finally took the hint and did a press event as the summit came into view in August. Given that there is so little surprise left in what Sun is announcing today, it still feels momentous and more than a little delicious to get to the top and look out at the view:

Has there ever been a larger single donation of source code into open source before ?

The source for all three of our Java platform implementations: Java ME, Java SE and Java EE are going out under GPLv2. (Yes, the licence the Linux community uses.)

Blink.

That's the view from the top !

In the JDK team, we're open sourcing the javac compiler and Hotspot today, on the new OpenJDK website, with the rest to follow next year. There's plenty of scaffolding holding things up for now. If you're not already busy in the JCP working on the API specifications for Java SE, come join us in as the infrastructure and governance model takes shape for our implementation for Java SE over the next few months.

PS. Yes, Java EE's implementation Glassfish was already open source, so now its doubly so :-)


Posted by dannycoward ( Nov 13 2006, 12:02:05 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [6]