Java goes Open Source

Published on November 13th, 2006 in Java

There have been a lot of rumours spreading around the web about the possible “open-sourcing” of Sun Microsystems’ Java. Until today, it was known that J2ME (Micro Edition) for PDAs and other portable devices was going to be opened up, but it was unknown if more important parts like the JDK, J2SE and J2EE (Standard & Enterprise Editions) were going to get the same treatment. Well, today Sun is announcing that they will. Today it is already releasing the Virtual Machine, the Java Compiler and JavaHelp as open-source. A complete, open-source JDK will be available during the first half of 2007. It remains to be seen how long it takes for those other parts to be released, but it looks like 2007 might become the Java Open-Source year.

Here’s the official, short version of the announcement:
Sun believes deeply in creating communities and sharing innovations and technologies to foster more participation. Today in a historic move, Sun is opening the door to greater innovation by open sourcing key Java implementations—Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE), Java Platform Micro Edition (Java ME), and Java Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE)—under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2), the same license as GNU/Linux.

Read the full announcement here.

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