Back in May 2006, Sun announced during the JavaOne conference it would release Java as open source, licensed as GPL software. While it was released as GPL, it still contained about 5 percent proprietary, non-free code - the Java trap, as the FSF calls it. The FSF called to dismantle this trap, and now the IcedTea project has reached an important milestone.
Source: *www.osnews.com/story/19892/Java_Is_finally_Free_and_Open
good news to all java guys..
Great News.
A big step towards OSS.
Thanks for the good news..Will it decrease Java based phone price?
^^Not really..Java was always Free as in "Free Beer", this thing makes it Free as in "Freedom" as well!
good news . . . Now we can expect more improvements on it .
Hope the FOSS community would throw their weight behind Java (esp in browsers), so that we can finally have a truly browser independent (unlike AJAX) and completely free (as in freedom) RIA platform (unlike Flash and Silverlight).
Java 6 is pretty fast already compared to older versions and in Java 6 update 10 (Beta now) there are improvements to make applets much better too (to compete in RIA space).
