The IcedTea Project has completed a major milestone by passing the Java Test Compatibility Kit (TCK). What all that means is that the IcedTea Project has achieved what Sun promised to do over two years ago at JavaOne: make Java completely open-source. Red Hat's Fedora 9 will be the first Linux distribution to ship with an OpenJDK binary, and other Linux distributions will probably follow. Some developers are concerned that the availability of several different distributions that will come with each flavor of Linux will create chaos for developers, suggesting that they will then have to test their code on each distribution.
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aboutblank
16 years 15 weeks 2 days 6 hours ago
Another Victory for Freedom
For a long time (long before Sun's pledge to liberate Java), I had imagined that it would take the FS community longer than 2010 to get adequate replacements for all the major Java components. Now, the day has come when this goal is completed.
This is absolutely marvellous news. I currently have deep respect for Sun and all the other people involved in this undertaking. I want to pay my respect to these people in this little patch of web estate: thank you all.
sgbeal
16 years 15 weeks 2 days 8 hours ago
Java is far from irrelevant
i know that many out there feel that Java is now irrelevant (or close to it), but those same people obviously don't work in the financial industry. Java has a HUGE following in the financial industry. i work at a large European bank where probably a full 80% of the server-side applications (all of which a projects worth in the range of hundreds of millions of Euros) are implemented in Java. In 10 or 12 years, when C# finally settles in on SUN platforms (which still enjoy an exceedingly large market share in large companies), maybe then the market will shift from Java, but not before then.
Balzac
16 years 14 weeks 6 days 8 hours ago
Suddenly, Java has new relevance to me.
Maybe it's time to read that old Java book collecting dust on my bookshelf.