GPL for Sun Java
According to CRN, Sun will probably release the source of Java under the GPL. This is a very smart move, I think, because it makes it possible to include the Standard and Mobile Edition of Java in most Linux distributions. On the other hand it renders the GCJ project rather useless. A GPL’ed J2SE makes it possible to use a completely free development platform, ranging from the compiler and runtime environment (J2SE and J2RE), development platform (Eclipse), application server (Tomcat) and database (Hibernate in combination with MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird or MaxDB (the former SAPdb)).
Sadly, it is not official yet and Sun doesn’t want to confirm anything. I think it would be a very good move from Sun, because it would become one of the few real open source companies (among Red Hat, MySQL and IBM). It doesn’t make any difference for the profitability for Sun, because Java was already available for free. I’m not sure but as far as I know, Sun has not many software you have to pay for. Most software is available under some kind of open source license (mostly CDDL) including Solaris. They probably will make most of their many with hardware sales and service and support.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 at 13:05 and is filed under English, Linux and OSS, Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Comments are closed.