I honestly have not been paying much attention to the progress of the open-sourcing of Java since Sun announced their intentions do it a while back.  But I have to admit being pretty surprised to hear they chose the GPL.  This is a significant boost to the Free Software Foundation and other GPL software, most notably Linux.  Lots of big implications of taking such a sizable code-base open.  The most successful programming platform available today.  On a more practical note, I have recently switched to Ubuntu on my desktop and will be glad to see a real, working JRE bundled with their distribution.

My other question/observation is how this impacts the JCP.  I guess that infrastructure for guiding Java will be fully leveraged with the "new" open-source Java.  But will JCP play with the GPL community (and vice versa)?

You can read more at here at Slashdot or Sun (check the thorough FAQ).