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Sun's Java Will Be Free This Year

Posted by kdawson on from the long-strange-trip dept.

Ian Whyde notes that Sun is finally coming to the end of its struggle to open up Java completely. Simon Phipps, the chief open source officer at Sun Microsystems, said: "There were a couple of holdouts there. One was the area to do with raster graphics and 2D graphics. That turned out to be owned by a company that didn't want us to release that code as open source. We negotiated with them and because they've said 'yes, you can open source the code'... The only element that's left now is actually a sound-related component within Java. We finally decided that the vendor that's involved there just isn't going to play ball and we're rewriting the code from scratch. That's going to be done within the next couple of months." In another sense the milestone of a free Java was reached this week when IcedTea passed the rigorous Java Test Compatibility Kit.

6 of 274 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Next Question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    And then we can fork it and wreak havoc on MicroSoft's plans by calling it .Nut!
    Oh yey.

  2. Adobe + Sun + Opensource = Heaven by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Am I the only one who loves Coldfusion?

    -Jim Bastard

    1. Re:Adobe + Sun + Opensource = Heaven by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yes

    2. Re:Adobe + Sun + Opensource = Heaven by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I thought you were dead already...

  3. Re:I hope by nonewmsgs · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... people recognize the scale and generosity of what Sun have done in GPL'ing their crown jewel.

    you mean zfs is going to be gpl'ed?
  4. Re:In other news by Mortice · · Score: 5, Funny

    s/obvious/funny/g