What is Sun announcing?
Fulfilling its promise to the world exactly one year later, Sun is releasing a fully buildable implementation of the JDK in the OpenJDK Community.
Specifically:
* Sun proudly announces that almost all of the JDK is now available under the GPL 6.5 million lines of code, one of the largest and most important contributions to the Free Software community in history.
* In conjunction with the NetBeans 6 preview release, Sun has created pre-built Netbeans projects to make it easy and intuitive to dive into the OpenJDK code base, making NetBeans and Sun Studio the gateways to participation in the OpenJDK project.
* Sun announces the formation of the OpenJDK Interim Governance Board with the charter to write and gain ratification for a Constitution for the OpenJDK Community, based on transparency and an open, meritocratic process. The IGB will invite active participation in this process, with the goal that OpenJDK governance will be representative of a broad and inclusive consensus reflecting the will of the whole community.
* Sun is creating a clear process for OpenJDK-based implementations of Java SE to test for compatibility starting with implementations of Java SE 6, and once certified, to brand their implementations "Java Compatible" while still meeting all of their obligations under the GPL. This process will advance the "Write Once, Run Anywhere" promise of Java Compatibility into the Free and Open Source software world, and guarantee that the innovations made possible by OpenJDK remain forever available to all.
* Sun announces a one year roadmap for the OpenJDK initiative, including clearing the remaining encumbrances, open sourcing an implementation of Java SE 6 and associated deployment code, implementation of the compatibility testing and branding program, and establishment of the governance and contribution model for the community.
Following on to Sun's November 13, 2006 announcement six months ago of the creation of the OpenJDK project and community, and the widely acclaimed choice of GPL v2 as the license for Sun's open-source JDK initiative, Sun is delivering in only one year on substantially all of its promises to the industry. Building on this momentum, Sun has solidified its position as the pre-eminent contributor to the F/OSS ecosystem.
What is the significance of this announcement to the industry?
This announcement takes open-source, compatible Java from a long-standing dream of developers worldwide, to concrete reality. With the open sourcing of the code base for one of the industry's most significant and pervasive software platforms, the groundwork has been established to foster adoption in new markets, to build broader communities, and fuel even more innovation. With over 5.4 billion Java technology enabled devices, Java technology has already demonstrated explosive growth, appearing in volume nearly everywhere. Now, as free software, the Java platform can address new markets and be the engine of innovation for the next generation of networked applications.