What is the state of Open Source Java?

Question

What is the current state of Java's transition to an open source license (which Wikipedia lists as the GNU General Public License / Java Community Process)?

Java being inclusive of many things, including:

• The JVM
• The JRE
• The JDK
• The Core Java Libraries
• JavaME
• JavaEE

I've heard/read various things, but never seen it laid out in a straight, definitive, manner. However if you know about only a subsection of Java, don't hesitate to add an answer.

Just to clarify, this question is about the current state of the process, not what Sun may or may not do in the future.

Answer 1

I can't say that I know all that much about the current transition/process, but I can tell you that the OpenJDK (see also OpenJDK on Wikipedia), specifically OpenJDK 6 is good enough to be used in place of the Sun Java JDK 6 release, and it has now been certified by Canonical for use in Ubuntu Jaunty.

Answer 2

Even though OpenJDK makes Java's implementation open, there have been still some concerns because Java's specification is not open.

Answer 3

You won't get a definitive answer here on SO. Or on Wikipedia. Or on gnu.org.

If there is any such thing as a definitive answer, it is what Sun says on the Free and Open Source Java page.

Any summary I make will be non-definitive, so I won't.

Answer 4

As you've quite rightly pointed out, Java encompasses a large number of components; I'm not sure that you'll be able to get a definitive answer that clarifies all the intricacies here.

However, based on various licensing that I've read so far, Java is (supposed to be) fully GPL'd now with the exception of the SNMP implementation which is still encumbered. This includes all of items you've stated, with the possible exception of Java EE. (I don't know much about that)

With regards to the state of the process; there doesn't appear to be much progress on replacing the SNMP implementation. I would therefore take the view that Java 6 will not be fully GPL compliant.

Java 7 looks like it will be fully GPL compliant from the info that Sun have been giving out. But that's not due for release until 2010 - and that's a tentative timescale.