It has been just over a year since OpenJDK, the GPL-licensed implementation of the Java platform, was officially released by Sun. Since that time, the Java community has begun re-orienting themselves around this new open-source code-base.
IcedTea6 1.2 was released - which is version 1.2 of IcedTea for OpenJDK6. Version 1.2 includes several changes from 1.1, including:
For more information and updates on the IcedTea project, be sure to check out the IcedTea wiki. Likewise, for more information about the OpenJDK project, you can browse the primary OpenJDK website.
IcedTea6 1.2 was released - which is version 1.2 of IcedTea for OpenJDK6. Version 1.2 includes several changes from 1.1, including:
As the open-source community has been working to adopt OpenJDK, changes have also been taking place inside OpenJDK itself to adjust to the community. Mark Reinhold, Chief Engineer of Java SE, announced the first amendment to the OpenJDK charter this past week - the amendment was needed as a deadline in the original charter has already past:
- Updated to b09.
- Added the the lcms library with PYCC and LINEAR_RGB ICC
- profiles.
- Integrated Gervill to provide midi support.
- JTreg integrated.
- javaws/NetX fixes:
- improved security, namely catching Socket permissions during
- runtime
- implemented the remaining JNLP services api (PrintService, JNLPRandomAccessFile)
- applet focusing bug fixed
Reinhold explains that work towards a constitution has been continually deferred so the OpenJDK members could focus on working with the community working to adopt the project. One of those primary community efforts is IcedTea. Reinhold also mentions that while, in theory, the current governance board doesn't meet the eventual goals of independence from Sun, in practice it has been working well up to this point.The Charter specifies that the Interim Governance Board shall be dissolved after one year of existence, in particular on 8 May 2008, i.e., three weeks ago.
We don’t yet have a Constitution, even in draft form.
So, rather than focus on drafting a formalized governance document we instead put our energy into working on the code and on the essential infrastructure to support collaboration upon it.The charter has subsequently been amended to add an additional year to the deadline, and also expand the board from five members to seven.
For more information and updates on the IcedTea project, be sure to check out the IcedTea wiki. Likewise, for more information about the OpenJDK project, you can browse the primary OpenJDK website.
The IcedTea project was created by the GNU Classpath team along with a handful of RedHat developers due to the need to replace all of the remaining proprietary code in OpenJDK with open source implementations. GNU Classpath provides many GPL-licensed replacements of the proprietary-licensed binary plugs still found in OpenJDK, making an IcedTea build of OpenJDK more-readily available for distributions on platforms such as Redhat's Fedora Linux distribution. Fedora 9 contains functionally complete OpenJDK packages, in part due to the contributions from IcedTea.
The issue of proprietary, binary-only plugs is not the only reason that the IcedTea project was started - another is the lack of platform portability currently found in OpenJDK:
The high-performance JIT that is being worked on is the 'shark' project, currently being developed by Gary Benson. Benson's goal with 'shark' is to write a completely platform-portable JIT, and has been providing regular status updates on his blog.