Sun Fulfills Promise of Open and Free Java Technology and Releases Java SE Platform to OpenJDK Community

Advances OpenJDK Project with New Code, NetBeans Integration, Governance Board and Availability of Compatibility Tests.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.-Sun Microsystems, Inc., (NASDAQ: SUNW), today announced the release of a fully buildable Java Development Kit (JDK) version for Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE) to the OpenJDK Community as free software under the GNU General Public License version two (GPLv2). In addition, Sun announced the Interim Governing Board for the OpenJDK community. Sun also announced that OpenJDK-based implementations can use the Java SE 6 Technical Compatibility Kit (JCK) to establish compatibility with the Java SE 6 specification.

“Less than one year after we announced our intent to release Java technology as open source software under GPL v2, we have achieved our goal, ” said Rich Green, executive vice president of Software at Sun. “Now the free and open source community has access to implementations of Java Platform Standard Edition, Enterprise Edition and Micro Edition as free software under the GPL. We will continue to collaborate with the Java community and the free and open source communities to determine the future of Java technology.”

This announcement represents one of the largest source code contributions to the free software community and the open source release of one of the industry’s most significant and pervasive software platforms. Available immediately at the OpenJDK project on java.net, is all the unencumbered source code for Sun’s future implementation of Java SE 7, as well as binary plugs for the remaining few instances of encumbered code.

“I thank Sun for releasing its code in the JDK as free software, under a license that respects the four freedoms, ” said Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation. “Only one last obstacle remains in liberating JDK and disarming the Java Trap completely: some non-free, legally encumbered code. The free software community and Sun must work together to replace that code with free software.”

Compatibility Matters - The JCK

Sun is creating a clear process for OpenJDK-based implementations of Java SE to test for compatibility. Once certified, these implementations will be eligible to use the “Java Compatible” logo, while still meeting all of their obligations under the GPL. This process can help to advance the “Write Once, Run Anywhere” promise of Java technology compatibility into the free and open source software world, and guarantee the innovations made possible by the OpenJDK project remain forever available to everyone.

OpenJDK Interim Governance Board

The Interim Governance Board’s charter is to draft and gain ratification of a new constitution for the OpenJDK Community within the next year, with active participation from the membership. The goal of OpenJDK governance is to be representative of a broad and inclusive consensus of OpenJDK members. The community will then hold an election to replace the Interim Governance Board with a duly elected board in accordance with the OpenJDK constitution. The five members of the Interim Governance Board for the OpenJDK Community are:

* Doug Lea is a professor at SUNY, Oswego and an expert in object-oriented software development, software reusability and distributed, concurrent, and parallel object systems. Doug was the specification lead for JSR-166, Concurrency Utilities in Java SE. He is a member of the Java Community Process (JCP) SE/EE Executive Committee and is a Java Champion.
* Dalibor Topiç is a graduate student at the University of Saarland, Saarbrücken, Germany and works at the Max-Planck Institute for Computer Science. A member of the Free Software Foundation, Dalibor participates in the GNU Classpath project and has been instrumental in bringing several Java technology-oriented free software projects together including GNU Classpath, Kaffe and GNU Compiler for Java.
* Fabiane Biznella Nardon is currently the CTO of ZILICS, a Brazilian Healthcare Information Systems provider with large distributed projects deployed in countries like Brazil and Angola/Africa. She was the architect of the Sao Paulo City Health Care Information System, a Duke’s Choice Award winner in 2005. Fabiane is also the java.net Java Technology Tools Community Leader and a Java Champion.
* Mark Reinhold is Chief Engineer, Java Platform, Standard Edition, Sun Microsystems, Inc. His past contributions to the platform include character-stream readers and writers, reference objects, shutdown hooks, the NIO high-performance I/O APIs, library generification and service loaders. He was the lead engineer for the 1.2 and 5.0 releases, the specification lead for Java SE 6 and is currently leading the engineering team for the OpenJDK project. Mark holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
* Simon Phipps is Chief Open Source Officer of Sun Microsystems, Inc. and is an advisory member of a number of open source communities including the GNOME Foundation, OpenSPARC Technology, OpenSolaris Project and the China Open Source Promotion Union. He was also instrumental in the introduction of the Java platform to IBM in 1995.

Developer Tools Simplify OpenJDK Development

To help developers get started with OpenJDK, Sun has created pre-built NetBeans Integrated Development Environment (IDE) projects to help make it easy and intuitive for developers to dive into the OpenJDK code base. Available today, in conjunction with the NetBeans IDE 6 preview release, developers can download the source code, open it in the NetBeans IDE and use the Build Project command to build a working JDK. For further information and a step-by-step tutorial go to: http://nb-openjdk.netbeans.org. Developers wishing to use the platform-specific native code in the Java HotSpot virtual machine can leverage the world-record producing Sun Studio software development environment.