By Justin Silverton

In a suprising (yet not so surprising) announcement:

“Sun will release the first pieces of source code for Sun’s implementation of JSE (Java Platform Standard Edition) and a buildable implementation of JME (Java Platform Micro Edition).

Sun will also be making JEE (Java Platform Enterprise Edition) available under the GNU GPL v2 (General Public License version two).”

This sudden interest in open sourcing java has not always been the case.

“By open-sourcing Sun’s implementation of Java technology, we will inspire a new phase of developer collaboration and innovation using the NetBeans IDE [Integrated Development Environment] and expect the Java platform to be the foundation infrastructure for next generation Internet, desktop, mobile and enterprise applications,” said Rich Green, Sun’s executive VP of Software, in a statement.”

With the JDK [Java Development Kit] released as free software under the GPL, Sun will be working closely with distributors of the GNU/Linux operating system, who will soon be able to include the JDK as part of the open-source repositories that are commonly included with GNU/Linux distributions. Sun is releasing these technologies as open source in order to accelerate Java’s development and evolution.  In addition, Sun said it hopes that it will reduce fragmentation and drive down development costs throughout the Java ME ecosystem. In addition, this move will provide easy access to the latest versions of Java ME platform technologies and, for the first time, enable the whole Java ME community to follow the activities of and participate in the development of these technologies.

This is a step in the right direction for Sun.  With the power of the open source community, Java will now have more of a future as a development platform.