Stratocaster

Thanks to the hard work and dedication of a big team of people both inside of Sun, and in the Free Java community working on projects as diverse as GNU Classpath, GCJ, and IcedTea, Sun's open source Java initiative has reached a new milestone. Both Ubuntu 8.04LTS (Hardy Heron) and the upcoming Fedora 9 releases have an OpenJDK-based implementation of the JDK in their free software repositories.

We said 18 months ago we wanted to get Java into GNU/Linux distros. Its been a long hard road but we did it! "We" being the community, not just Sun. Now developers who are inventing the next YouTube or Twitter, the next amazing web application that quickly becomes something we all can't live without - and who wouldn't imagine using anything but a completely FOSS stack on which to build - can rely on Java. Now the platform itself will evolve that much faster, driven by the needs of the most sophisticated developers on earth. Now Java can go wherever GNU/Linux goes.

There is still work to be done: the implementations out there are not 100% compatible, though they are 100% Free software. But there are only a few bits that are still encumbered: the sound engine, some SNMP code, and a few other odds and ends. And these encumbrances are on the verge of being cleared, thanks to the diligence and passion of Free Java developers. And then there's governance to be established, infrastructure to be built, projects to be hacked, more distros and platforms to be ported to, more code to make Free, more innovation and excitement to be had.

What a great way to kick off JavaOne 2008!