Open Sourcing Java (from NetBeans Day)

William Grosso @ May 15, 2006

Tim Bray has most of the story. Basically, when asked about open sourcing Java, Rich Green replied with "Why not?"

The part I found interesting was that Rich also said, more or less, that the "why not" was contingent on more community participation. I don't have the exact phrasing, but what he said was something along the lines of If we get a lot more people involved in the JCP, and that works out well, then we'll probably open source the whole shebang.

Which sounded reasonable to me. The idea of open-sourcing something like Java boils down to transferring at least some ownership to the larger community. Asking people to step up and demonstrate that they have real interest in being owners, and also doing a trial run of the various processes that might be involved, via expanding the scope and role of the JCP, sounds like the natural next step.

[Updated: In the first version of this, I wrote that Tim "skipped over" Rich's comments on community participation. On a second reading of Bray's post, that's completely false.]

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