Rich Sands, Sun's OpenJDK community marketing manager, has
been in the thick of the decision-making and community-building
activities going on to create and build the Sun-sponsored OpenJDK
community on java.net. We spoke to Rich not long after the
announcement of the fully buildable OpenJDK release at this week's
2007 JavaOne conference in San Francisco.
Q: Rich, big news for the OpenJDK community! Tell us more about
what's going on.
A: Sure, I'd be happy to. We've reached a real milestone with the
OpenJDK initiative. This is the moment when developers can really
dig in and start gaining the benefits of open-source Java(TM)
technology. I'm really proud of the whole team for pulling out the
stops and open sourcing this mammoth code base in only a year's
time. It's been an amazing adventure for us inside Sun, but now the
journey starts for the OpenJDK community. Specifically, we announced
the following:
You can now go to the OpenJDK Project, download the source code under GPL, and build a working JDK.
Second, we've chartered an interim governance board to create a
constitution with the participation of the OpenJDK
community, then hold board elections within the coming year.
Finally, we've announced that OpenJDK-based implementations of the
Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) will have a clear
process to test for compatibility using the Java SE TCKs -- the
compatibility tests that prove whether an implementation meets the
standard.
Q: So what code is now available for developers to hack on and
contribute to?
A: Very nearly the whole JDK(TM), including the compiler, virtual
machine, and all the class libraries and tools -- all of it! There
are just a few pieces of code that we got from outside of Sun that
we don't have the right to distribute under GPL. Those bits of
encumbered code are there but as binary plugs, so you can still
build a working JDK. We invite you to join the community and help
clear these encumbrances!
Q: What else can developers do now?
A: Get involved, learn how the JDK is put together, fix that bug
that's been driving you nuts, join the conversations in the mailing
lists, start or participate in projects to improve the
implementation. Really, the only limit is your imagination. But you
have to join and participate to make a difference.
Q: Who is on the new OpenJDK interim governance board? What will
they be doing to establish fair governance for the community?
A: The OpenJDK interim governance board is made up of three non-Sun
and two Sun members. We are really thrilled to have such stellar
people from both outside and inside of Sun serving in this capacity:
- Doug Lea is a
professor at SUNY, Oswego. He is an expert in object-oriented
software development; distributed, concurrent, and parallel object
systems; and software reusability. Doug was the spec lead for JSR
166, Concurrency Utilities in Java SE. He is a member of the Java
Community Process program's SE/EE Executive Committee and is a
Java Champion.
- Dalibor Topic
is a graduate student at the University of Saarland,
Saarbrücken, Germany, and works at the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science.
He is a well-known and outspoken thought leader for the free
software movement, as well as a co-maintainer of the Kaffe.org
virtual machine project. A member of the Free Software Foundation,
Dalibor participates in the GNU Classpath project and has been
instrumental in bringing several Java technology-oriented free
software projects together including GNU Classpath, Kaffe, and GCJ.
- Fabiane Bizinella Nardon is currently
the CTO of ZILICS, a Brazilian healthcare information systems
provider with large distributed projects deployed in countries such
as Brazil and Angola (Africa). She was the architect of the
São Paulo city health care information system, a Duke's Choice Award winner in 2005. Fabiane is
also the java.net JavaTools Community Leader and a Java Champion.
- Mark Reinhold is the chief
engineer for Java SE at Sun Microsystems.
- Simon Phipps is the
chief open-source officer at Sun Microsystems.
Sun has signed the OpenJDK Charter to empower these well-known and
experienced Java technology leaders to work with the rest of the
OpenJDK community to draft a new constitution, get it ratified by
the members, and then hold democratic elections to replace the
interim governance board with an elected governance board.
The elected board, which will also be made up of three non-Sun and
two Sun members, will then oversee the operation of the community
for everyone's benefit and help to ensure that the OpenJDK project
is transparent and democratic.
We expect that the constitution will enshrine processes that entrust
the privilege and responsibility to steer the future of the OpenJDK
code base to those who are most committed and whose contributions
have the most merit.
Q: What's the big deal about giving OpenJDK-based implementations
access to the Java SE Technology Compatibility Kits (TCKs)?
A: One of the biggest advantages of the Java platform is that you
can "Write Once, Run Anywhere." There is a standard that the
Java Community Process
(JCP) program has established through a participatory process
that defines what constitutes Java technology.
Standards are commonplace, but what makes Java technology special is
that the JCP program mandates that every specification is
accompanied by a TCK, which is a corresponding set of compliance
tests, tools, and documentation that lets you test an implementation
to certify that it is compatible with the spec.
So now that the JDK is in an open-source code commons and anyone can
modify it any way they like according to the terms of the GPL, how
can we tell whether the result is still "Java"?
Sun is going to make it easy to certify the compatibility of
implementations based on OpenJDK code by granting access to the Java
SE TCKs under a special license, and that in turn will help
safeguard the "Write Once, Run Anywhere" compatibility promise for
everyone. The details are still being worked out, but we're
committed to compatibility for Java technology as free software.
Q: Now that the code is free and the governance is in the hands of
the community, what do you hope will happen?
A: Perhaps the easiest way to answer is to describe what I saw when
I attended the FISL conference in Porto Alegre, Brazil --
one of the largest and most important free software events in the
world.
Java technology is really very popular in Brazil. It is used to
implement the government's tax collection web portal, for instance,
and is used across all of government and by many large enterprises.
But Brazil is just scratching the surface of the potential for Java
technology to transform its IT infrastructure. I heard time and
again that Java Livre, Free Java, would energize this
country of more than 180 million citizens to use Java technology in
ways that we can't even predict today.
Where this goes and what will happen is up to you, the community.
You're in the driver's seat. You can do anything you want to with this
platform -- and I can't wait to see the innovation that will result!
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