Sun Microsystems plans to publish the first open source Java code by October this year, the company has revealed. Laurie Tolson, vice president of developer programmes and products at Sun, said at a company event that the first components include Java C and the Hotspot VM. The remainder of the code will be open sourced by the end of 2007.

Sun first announced that it would release the Java source code under an open source licence at JavaOne in May. The company is still considering the licence under which it will release the technology, and has launched a special website, Open Sourcing the JDK, soliciting feedback from developers.

"Our primary focus is to be compatible, putting programmes in place that people can rely on for compatible implementations of Java," said Tolson. Sun has also expanded its open source Java initiative with the Java ME technology that allows mobile phones to run Java code. It has not been made clear whether the mobile version of Java would be included in the open source initiative.

News source: Vnunet
Link: Java OpenSource Community
There is, however, a clear trend towards the use of open source software on mobile phones, according to Alan Brenner, vice president of mobile and embedded devices at Sun.

Brenner pointed at the consortium set up in June by Motorola, NEC, Panasonic, Samsung, NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone which seeks to create a standard version of mobile Linux.

"So far we have clearly seen that going in an OS direction for Java ME is the right and logical choice at this point. We really do want to lead and establish that direction in the market," said Brenner.

He added that "most" of Java ME will be released under an open source licence by the end of 2006.


There are 11 additional comments
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Quote this comment Reply to this comment #1 Posted by CoolCatBad on 18 Aug 2006 - 11:48
Wow, that's fantastic news!

!
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #2 Posted by Havin_it on 18 Aug 2006 - 12:42
Mainly good news, if they see it through.

Sun Java packages are my biggest headache as a Linux server owner. Currently, I have to hunt out the right package on the website (can be a bit of a challenge if your distro is using the last-but-one revision of JRe or JDK), download it to a desktop machine, then SCP it to the right location on the server. If all the poxy click-thru licenses are dumped and distros can redistribute the packages, my nightmares are over, so that's good

I really hope to god that Motorola phones don't become more heavily Java-based, though: the UI on mine is embarrassingly slow already.
(1 reply) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #3 Posted by xxpor on 18 Aug 2006 - 12:43
BSD licence ftw
Quote this comment #3.1 Posted by MrA on 18 Aug 2006 - 16:39
or MIT, or GPL/LGPL, or Artistic, or Apache, or CDDL, etc

There are so many licences to choose from. With something as complex as a Java implementation, it'll be tricky to figure out which one to apply. They could do BSD or MIT, but then some random person could come along and close source it make a proprietary peice of software from Sun's hard work. Or they could use the GPL which being a very restrictive license, prevents that from happening, but may close oppertunities for incleased market share.
(2 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #4 Posted by em_te on 18 Aug 2006 - 12:44
Awesome! Hopefully this will mean that we will finally get operator overloading and openGL into Java.
Quote this comment #4.1 Posted by tareqsiraj on 18 Aug 2006 - 12:56
Quote - em_te said @ #4
Awesome! Hopefully this will mean that we will finally get operator overloading and openGL into Java.
I thought we already have OpenGL in Java... I think its called Java3D... somewhere in java.net ... forgot where i saw it.
Quote this comment #4.2 Posted by Soleen on 18 Aug 2006 - 20:04
Operator overloading is not that important.. IMO
What really needs to be implemented is unsigned primitive types!!!
I can't believe java does not have unsiged int, unsigned long etc...
Java needs to be optimized: short by specification 16 bits, however internally they are treated as 32 bit... Even chars are treated as 32 bit. We need a pure version of java for 64 bit machines as well... Currently it is not optimized for 64 bit machines as it could be...
As another important thing is dynamic class loading (with different function signatures!!! and of course dynamic heaps. Java VM also must return unused heap to the system, it does not currently do so..
Bescially therea re millions of wishises for java
(3 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #5 Posted by sgtLENIN on 18 Aug 2006 - 13:00
java is ****.
Quote this comment #5.1 Posted by mrmckeb on 18 Aug 2006 - 13:03
Quote - sgtLENIN said @ #5
java is ****.
Agreed. Why can't these guys just use WM and DX? Stop trying to be cheap, it'll hurt them in the end!
Quote this comment #5.2 Posted by billyea on 18 Aug 2006 - 16:15
Quote - sgtLENIN said @ #5
java is ****.

then don't use it -.-
Quote this comment #5.3 Posted by RealFduch on 19 Aug 2006 - 01:16
I agree. Don't this silly slow bloated proprietary **** PRed by the clown who's not funny anymore.
Use fast free shared-source .Net instead.
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