thelinuxlink.net

We all knew that Sun was going to open source it but we didn't know the license. I think it's a bit surprising and very encouraging that it will be GPL.

http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnew ... =193600331

Sun Microsystems has talked a lot about putting Java into an open-source license. Now it's ready to move.

The company is very close to announcing that it will put the mobile (ME) and standard (SE) editions of the Java platform into the GNU General Public License (GPL), with the Java Enterprise Edition and GlassFish reference implementation (currently open-sourced under Sun's Common Development and Distribution License, or CDDL) to follow, several industry sources said.

This is very encouraging indeed, hopefully they will go through with this, because you never know with Sun, but I have my hopes up because right from the start they said the GPL was very much on the table.

It's gonna be interesting to see if they're gonna do "GPL v2 or any later version" or "GPLv2".

If true, this is great news indeed.
The implications are pretty damn cool:
- OpenOffice will ship with java installed by default
- browsers will be able to ship with java installed by default
- the open java project will no longer be required

More ammo to use at work. We're getting knee deep in java development. We already use Eclipse as our IDE and if the whole language is GPL'd then F/OSS will be everywhere. There will be very few reasons not to let developers switch to Linux. The only argument I can think of is that none of the desktop admins know Linux. There is a contingent of unix people that administer the Solaris boxes.

I guess I'll give my standard reply once again:

I'll believe it when I see it. Sun has not helped their image by making promises and dragging their feet. The need to just SHUT UP AND DO IT!