Java is officially Free Software, released under the GPL

[patrickdavila]

Great news:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2055770,00.asp

A press conference will be held in a few hours:
http://www.sun.com/

[JeffS]

Yes, this is fantastic news. It will help accelerate both Java usage and Java development (contributions from open source community).

Developers tend to flock around free languages/tools.

And Linux distros will now be able to more easily distribute the JRE and the JDK as part of their base distro.

Linux and Java will both benefit immensely.

And it's going to make .Net, and especially Mono, less relevant.

Finally, Microsoft's veiled threats to sue anyone using non-Novell have been largely de-fanged, particularly as the pertain to .Net technology. This is because .Net is largely a big "embrace and extend" of Java, and Sun has copyright and patents on this technology. In other words, prior art.

Exciting times for both Java and Linux.

[JeremyEritrea]

I must be missing something.

I really don't see how this will affect the .Net Framework.

[JeffS]

I must be missing something.

I really don't see how this will affect the .Net Framework.

The open sourcing of Java will lead to greater adoption, and thus mind share. Mind share is ever-important for the success of any programming language or technology.

This is a concept very well understood by Microsoft. Steve Ballmer himself famously chanted "Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers!!!" in one of his keynotes.

Thus, it becomes a competitive advantage over the closed nature of .Net.

No, it does not affect .Net directly. But it gives Java a leg up on .Net.

[patrickdavila]

At the press conference Jonathan Schwartz hinted that Sun may release Solaris under the GPL. Not that would be awesome. If it's GPL'd nothing would stop other OSs like Linux from cherry picking the best features of Solaris. Imagine ZFS on a Linux system. Now that would be amazing. For those unfamiliar with ZFS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS

[JeffS]

At the press conference Jonathan Schwartz hinted that Sun may release Solaris under the GPL. Not that would be awesome. If it's GPL'd nothing would stop other OSs like Linux from cherry picking the best features of Solaris. Imagine ZFS on a Linux system. Now that would be amazing. For those unfamiliar with ZFS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS

Yup. But Sun engineers, and the Solaris community, will also be able to cherry pick the best things out of Linux. Most significantly, they could mix in GPL'd Linux drivers, and drivers for greater hardware support are badly needed for greater Solaris adoption. Thus, GPLing Solaris would benefit both camps.

Sun's GPL strategy will be great for Sun, and the open source community, and most importantly, customers and users. And most happily, Sun's GPL strategy will be a thorn in the side of Microsoft and IBM. The former will have a harder time competing with the closed, patent encumbered, non-cross platform .Net. The latter wanted Sun to release Java in the less restrictive Apache license, so they could take it and fork it and they would use their massive size and influence to make their forked version the "de facto" standard.

Sun's GPL strategy should also increase paid commercial licenses, from large tech firms that want to re-distribute Java in a proprietary fashion, so as to avoid the "viral" nature of the GPL.

This dual licensing strategy has worked out really well for Trolltech and QT. It will work out even better for Sun and Java, due to Sun's size, and Java's popularity.

So Sun gets more money, which they thoroughly deserve, and the open source gets a great new toy, and customers/users benefit.

Great stuff.