Yesterday afternoon, Oracle and IBM sent out a press release touting their commitments to work together and collaborate on the OpenJDK project. "Specifically, the companies will collaborate in the OpenJDK community to develop the leading open source Java environment."

Why would IBM and Oracle feel the need to make this seemingly obvious announcement? For instance, the press release indicates that "Oracle and IBM will support the recently announced OpenJDK development roadmap, which accelerates the availability of Java SE across the open source community." In light of the fact that Oracle is the company that came up with the Java 7 roadmap, it would certainly be surprising if they did not support it.

Is it the fact that IBM has thrown their support behind the OpenJDK that makes this newsworthy? The press release doesn't indicate that IBM won't continue to build anything proprietary with regards to Java and the JDK. It simply states that when it comes to open source, the OpenJDK project is the one that Big Blue will be supporting.

More than anything, the idea here is simply to allay any fears the enterprise market has over the future of Java. Big Blue is behind Java. Oracle is behind Java. And with those two players showing a vote of confidence, the market can relax and stop thinking about jumping to another development platform. Perhaps it is not earth shattering news, but it is a message that the Java community does need to hear.

Oracle and IBM Collaborate to Accelerate Java Innovation Through OpenJDK

OpenJDK.org

JDK7 Roadmap

The real sub-text seems to be that IBM is stopping or at least dramatically reducing their contribution to Harmony and the incorporation of Harmony classes into the JVM they distribute.

That's huge news for Harmony with possible ripple effects on Android which uses a subset of Harmony.

It's good news for those who have to use the IBM JVM -- as Harmony clases in the latest IBM JVM have caused a lot of incompatibility with other JVMs and generally been good only for causing strange regressions and portability issues.

The real sub-text seems to be that IBM is stopping or at least dramatically reducing their contribution to Harmony and the incorporation of Harmony classes into the JVM they distribute.

That's huge news for Harmony with possible ripple effects on Android which uses a subset of Harmony.

It's good news for those who have to use the IBM JVM -- as Harmony clases in the latest IBM JVM have caused a lot of incompatibility with other JVMs and generally been good only for causing strange regressions and portability issues.

As sun set and business people came on to the show, They keep it pending and release them along with their products.

It shows the committment of oracle. It clears shows that oracle wants to reduce the cost of resources that are working on the JDK development. Its a good news for IBM as its becoming costly to develop JDK parallel harmony.

Hope JCP guys come with more and more specifications and push oracle and IBM push JDK faster to market.

Hi Naveen -

It clears shows that oracle wants to reduce the cost of resources that are working on the JDK development.

Just to be clear, Oracle is increasing the focus on Java (JVM+JDK) and the resources assigned to it, not trying to decrease those resources.

The real proof will be in the deliverables, starting with Java 7. Getting the Java releases back on track, and getting our large industry partners & competitors to work with us on common goals are proof points on that track.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy | Oracle Coherence

http://coherence.oracle.com/

I think its good that they announce it, help to diffuse some escalating FUD around Java after the Oracle purchase and departure of Gosling.

Of course its really funny seeing spinsters come out with more FUD and conspiracies, i.e. "speculations" about Harmony, etc.  I'm sure most TSSers are smart professionals who wouldn't post things like that... oh wait..