From Tim Bray
Java Is Free
When I took the job at Sun in early 2004, I had a long talk with John Fowler, about this blog among other things. John said: “You might end up happier if you don’t blog about open-sourcing Java.” That was then. Today’s story is simple: Unmodified GPL2 for our SE, ME, and EE code. GPL2 + Classpath exception for the SE libraries. Javac and HotSpot and JavaHelp code drops today. The libraries to follow, with pain expected fighting through the encumbrances. Governance TBD, but external committers are a design goal. No short-term changes in the TCK or JCP. There are a ton of presentations and an (excellent) FAQ and so on, all to show up at sun.com/opensource/java sometime in the next few hours. I wanted to add a couple of remarks on areas that stuff doesn’t highlight.
This is a huge shift for Java (TM) and will, I’m sure, have a big impact on the industry (including a lot of colleagues and probably me). It’s great to see Sun take such a big step in the right direction but the real question always was and still is governance. More thoughts later when there’s more information available.
0 Responses to “Java is RMS Free?”