Sun Microsystems has announced the release of an open-source version of its Java Development Kit for Java Platform Standard Edition. Sun has contributed the software to the OpenJDK Community as free software under the GNU GPLv2. Sun also announced that OpenJDK-based implementations can use the JCK (Java SE 6 Technical Compatibility Kit) to establish compatibility with the Java SE 6 specification.
"Less than one year after we announced our intent to release Java technology as open-source software under GPL v2, we have achieved our goal," Rich Green, Sun"s executive vice president of software said in a statement.
This announcement represents one of the largest source code contribution to the free software community and the open-source release of one of the industry"s most significant and pervasive software platforms, Sun officials said.
OpenBSD has already started importing the release into distribution, as other Linux/BSD platforms are expected to follow.