"A large flock of flying pigs is buzzing past and making a ruckus"

There have been a lot of opinions, blogs and articles covering yesterday's announcements around Java and our decision to GPL the platforms. Some negative, some positive... yet the majority have expressed excitement, surprise and disbelief. The title of this blog is actually borrowed from one of the many Slashdot responses to the thread "What are the people saying now who believed this would never happen?"

Most seem to agree that this move is good for developers, good for business and good for the platform:

• Sun Gives Open Source a Jolt of Caffeine
  A “more feature-rich platform” will be the payoff [for businesses].
• Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of Eclipse Foundation blogs
  Support for Open Source licensing and development brings us in line with competitors in certain perspectives.
• And Sun Said, Set My Java Free: The Open Source Q&A
  Stephen O'Grady shares his “guardedly optimistic” thoughts and some background on the announcement. And Stephen, we'll try to give you a brief break. No guarantees, though.
• Java goes GPL (Long live Machiavelli!)
  A Machiavellian view on Sun's choice of GPL.
• GPL Java Smoothes Business Integration
  Looks like a positive reception from resellers. The prospects of Linux and Java together are unstoppable.
• An Insider's View
  Kudos for sharing the knowledge and working with the community internal to Sun.
• Java’s Second Life
  Jonathan Eunice agrees that it's been a good day for Java and Open Source.
• Sun Pours Out Java Cup
  More perspectives...
• Red Hat on Open Java
  Red Hat agrees with us: “Making Java freely available under the GPL is good for developers, good for the community, and ultimately good for the customer.”
• The Java Posse Podcast
  A fun group of Java developer enthusiasts who enjoy sharing their expertise and opinions in this unique forum.
• Play Station 3 Includes Java on Blu-Ray
  It's everywhere.

Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green on stage at the Open Java launch in Santa Clara.

It truly has been a “beautiful day” for Sun and the entire software community, and as the U2 song closed out yesterday's announcements, I think that everyone who was part of this is looking back at everything, reveling in the fact that we just accomplished something many people believed would never happen.

What's next? Well, according to my two bosses on stage (see photo), I'll have my hands full trying to understand how GPL will fit into our other products.

Posted at 05:32PM Nov 14, 2006 by Peder Ulander in Sun  |  Comments[1]