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Sun Releases First GPLed Java Source

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the beginning-of-an-era dept.

An anonymous reader writes "You can now get GPLed JVM sources from Sun. Everyone seemed to be expecting the desktop version (J2SE) but J2ME has been released first. It looks to be buildable for Linux x86, MIPS, and ARM platforms. Sun now calls it 'phoneME.' Enjoy."

8 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. And if you want to play with it now... MIDPath by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Looks like this was released back in November with the full Java GPL announcement according to the official announcement.

    And people already started hacking it and combining it with all kinds of interesting existing free java projects to product MIDPath

    Seems the GNU Classpath, Kaffe, GCJ, etc projects really want to Collaborate and work together with Sun according to their latest release notes. 2007 might be a pretty interesting year for Java and GNU/Linux (and mobile devices!)

  2. Re:Linux is great and all by EGSonikku · · Score: 5, Funny

    Pfft, you've got the source, get to work!

    And I also want this running on the Super Nintendo this time tomorrow, *snap *snap

    --
    - "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
  3. Re:Linux is great and all by IversenX · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You are really, really, really comparing apples to oranges here.

    Mono is comparable, yes.

    However, Qt, GTK and wxWidgets are all just GUI toolkits! You still need a programming
    language (Pascal, C++, Perl, even Java(!)) to use these. Installation will be easier,
    though. I'm personally looking forward to "apt-get install sun-java" or somesuch.

    Also, it will soon (when J2SE comes out) be possible to write better integration with existing
    apps, such as better (faster, more modern) browser applet plugins. That, I'm looking
    forward to.

    (Oh, and now that the sources aer GPLed, it should be really easy to make this thing run on *BSD if it doesn't already)

    --
    With great numbers come great responsibility!
  4. Re:Mono is not compareanble either by alexhard · · Score: 5, Funny

    While I applaud the Mono team for all their hard work, it is not comparable to Java. Hell, Microsoft's .Net is not comparable to Java yet. With Java, you have a 10+ year old tried-and-true platform. You have 10+ years worth of class libraries written, most Open Source, that eliminate 50%-75% of your workload when writing any application..

    Sure, .Net does some things better than Java, like Windowing. But Mono's Windows.Forms is brand new and hardly what I could call enterprise-ready.
    And You have 10+ years of waiting for java apps to launch!
    --
    Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
  5. Congratulations to Sun and Thank You. by dwalsh · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Congratulations to the Sun people who have made this a reality.

    They are freeing up the crown jewels, and the significance of that fact should not be underestimated. Free as in 'gratis' and free as in 'libre'.

    I am not a Sun employee, but I am a Java dev., and I would like to remind people of Sun's contributions to open source over the years. While the press communications of executives have muddied the waters, Sun have done more in the past for open source than a certain "Think Free" company. That company pressed for open sourcing Java and then bitched about the choice of the GPL.

    I would love to see the source to Websphere (not the Geronimo 'Websphere' product, but the real deal).

    ... for laughs if nothing else.

    --
    ${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
    1. Re:Congratulations to Sun and Thank You. by tygerstripes · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Just wanted to say "hear hear". It took 20 posts before somebody actually had the decency to say Thank-you-this-is-a-good-thing, most of those 20 straying into completely niche related topics. I'm not saying they weren't all relevant or interesting points, but thanks for actually saying thanks.

      As far as I'm concerned: the short-term impact of this will be decent as people start getting their teeth into the source (as they have done since November), but the long-term impact will be fucking huge. I don't have a lot of personal experience, but this announcement combined with the fact that so many CS degrees start with OOP by teaching in Java means that people will routinely be encouraged to appreciate the power of FOSS from the start, before they get used to the limitations that its absence imposes.

      To reiterate: This-Is-A-Good-Thing.

      --
      Meta will eat itself
  6. Re:Mono is not compareanble either by molarmass192 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Java is hardly what I would call enterprise ready either.

    Man ... that's a +5 Funny if I've ever read one. You obviously don't work in an "enterprise". Take it from someone who does (telco), Java is used in massive deployments where Mono/.Net doesn't even make the faintest blip on the radar. There are production Java apps running with 5-9 uptimes that have been going for years.

    --

    Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
  7. Thank you Sun by wikinerd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I am very happy that Sun Microsystems open sourced its Java and OpenSolaris products. If I buy my own server hardware, I will certainly prefer Sun. Contrast this with Microsoft, which is known for its Embrace-Extend-and-Extinguish practices, its preference to its own shared source licences for the very few lines of code that they ever made public, their aggressive hiring of some open-source people (why? to silence them with dollars?), and shadowy agreements with GNU/Linux vendors. Sun initially tried to use CDDL, but now took a bold step by adopting GPL and releasing actual, useful, working code under it. This means that Sun has open-minded people in its management.