Java Will be release under a GPL licence!
From Joshua Marinacci Blog
"The big announcement today: Java will be open sourced under the GPL.
I think it makes a lot of sense because it protects Sun's interest in
preventing forks and also the community's interest in knowing that Java
will forever be available in the public sphere. The GPL has always
provided an option to fork just in case someone takes the code in a bad
direction. Historically having this option available ensures that it
never needs to actually be used, letting the community grow and thrive.
So what does this actually mean? What is the benefit to open source
Java? How will things change? Here's what I think will change and what
won't. I say this as my own opinion, not an official statement from
Sun. I also say this as someone new to Sun, coming to Sun two years ago
from an open source background. I'm sure that engineers with more
experience than I will have different opinions. So with that, let's
hear it:
How will open source change Java
- Real bugs will be fixed faster and non-bugs will be closed faster than ever.
- Java won't fork. Few developers will have incentive to fork
Java. It's a lot of work for little gain. Branches for new features or
new platform support: yes. A true fork: no. Not even MS has much to
gain from this anymore.
- The JCP will grow and change. As before, big decisions about
the future of Java will go through the Java Community Process. However,
with more interested developers the ranks of the JCP will grow and
change in some very good ways.
- Java will have first class support on Linux, Free-BSD, and other 100% open operating systems. This is huge. Hugely, huge. I'm hoping we'll finally get a KDE look and feel as well.
- NetBeans will open the entire JDK sources all at once.
It's true, we're working on it for NetBeans 6. With the new editor
infrastructure this will be possible. You might not actually want to do this, but it should be possible if you've got enough memory.
- We will see lots of small crazy experimental versions of Java
that add different things. Imagine a JDK with Find Bugs, MySQL, SwingX,
JDIC, JInput, JOGL, Java3D, Tritonus MP3, jSDL, KDE-Java, Gnome-Java
and a bunch of other cool libraries pre-integrated. We might even see
an entire downloadable VMWare virtual harddrive with Ubuntu + Super JDK
+ NetBeans preinstalled for the ultimate prefab development
environment.
- More adoption of Looking Glass. Now that Java can be freely
run on Linux desktops out of the box, there is incentive to ship
Looking Glass bundled in with the OS. There's a lot of good 3D cards
out there. Let's use'em!
- More 3D Java Games for all platforms. I expect that people
will start shipping an optimized copy of Java embedded in their
applications. The end user will never need to know that Java is
involved. JOGL + Java3D is now available for Win, Mac, and any copy of
Linux with the right X configuration (which is more common than ever).
- Burnable Java. Imagine a tool that burns a photo slideshow
application preloaded with your photos, plus a copy of Java, straight
to a CD. Hand the CD to your Mom, she pops it into her computer, and
the photo slideshow starts right up. You'll never need to worry about
the version of Java because it's shipped with your app. You don't need
to worry about the OS because you code against Java, not against native
APIs. (hmm. perhaps 'burnable java' isn't the right name for this. :)
- Java will grow to fill every available computing niche and finally achieve the goal of total world domination.
Okay, so maybe that last one is a stretch, but it's true that this will help to bring More Java to More Places."
The licence that Sun have now decided for Java are explained in a
document called the "GPL license". Those terms included the most
important one, which is that no-one may redistribute a version or
derivative of this Sun Java code without making the source code of that
version or derivative also come under the GPL. (Yes Steve Ballmer GPL act like a virus ;-) ).
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