In May, during the JavaOne keynote, Sun's Rich Green stated "it isn't a question of whether, but a question of how" in respect to the open sourcing of Java. Well, today there's an answer. From Tim Bray's ongoing:
"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."
Clicking on the sun.com/opensource/java link this morning, there's an announcement of an announcement webcast, starting today at 9:30 PST. I hope my schedule works out so I can listen in live. I imagine this news will dominate the technology conversation today, traditional tech press, blogs, business press, and, of course, enterprise hallways.
Are practitioners thinking this is a good thing? Or do you fear a fork?
Okay I'll be first to jump in and say I have no idea. I know we are not going to change our strategies based upon this. We already have several "forks" like IBM, HP etc. And the differences between them already can cause grief.
I'm sure this will take a while to play out so we will go into a wait and see mode. I think it is probably way to early to tell what this really means if anything.