New portal will track Java’s evolution into open source

August 28, 2006—Sun Microsystems has unveiled a portal that will detail its efforts to make its Java programming language available as open source code. After the announcement, Bob Brewin, Sun’s chief technology officer for software, talked to Computerworld about the state of the company’s effort to make Java SE (Standard Edition) code available to the open source community.

What is the goal for the new portal? The goal for the portal is transparency. We want to make sure that this is not just open source, but an open community. There have been open source projects in the past industry-wide where it is just, “Here is our source, do what you want.” The only way we can do that is to really engage the existing open source communities out there and ask them for their advice, guidance, and opinions.

Where does the effort to open the source code of Java stand today? We are currently planning to release significant pieces of our functionality in the fall. A Java programming compiler and the HotSpot Virtual Machine are examples. As we make sure the source is ready to go … we’ll begin releasing code over a period of time until we get the entire body out there.

What types of problems have you encountered so far in this effort? Identifying the various intellectual property encumbrances that might exist. An example is, within the graphics library, there are font rasterizers that allow you to represent characters on the screen. We have licensed those from other companies. We may ship other parts of the platform as open source, and [the rasterizer] will ship as a binary. Once Java is open sourced, the ideal situation is the community can help us create a replacement technology for it by developing it in open source.

We are trying to determine what the right governance model is and what the right licensing should be. We need to improve the infrastructure [for the community], provide a way for tracking bugs and feature requirements, and to do source-code management. It is not just creating a site where you can download the source. It will be a site where people can check in changes, for instance.

Do you expect that the open source effort will lead to changes to the Java Community Process? We are not entirely sure. There could be changes to it. We want external parties and committees to take part in the process. I don’t know what those changes will be yet. The principles upon which Java was created … still have to be there. Ideally, open-sourcing will not change the JCP.

Have you decided on a plan for releasing other parts of the Java code to the open source community? No. It is basically driven by requirements by the community and how rapidly we can get it ready for open source. It comes down to resources, time, and legal [issues] more than anything else.