“After years of avoidance, IBM is now joining the Oracle-led
open source OpenJDK effort. The OpenJDK is an open source reference
implementation of the Java platform. By finally bringing IBM into
the OpenJDK fold — something that Sun Microsystems was unable to
do — Oracle is helping to cement its position as the leader of the
Java community.“”Looking at the collaboration we’ll be doing with Oracle really
starts to take away the uncertainly around the future of Java,” Rod
Smith, vice president, emerging technologies, at IBM said on a
conference call with press. “We’ll compete on our commercial
offerings, but now we’ll have another level of collaboration around
advancing Java technology. This really does signal to our customers
and to open source developers a real long-term support for Java
technologies.”“Oracle acquired stewardship of Java when it acquired Sun
earlier this year. IBM is coming a bit late to the OpenJDK effort.
Open source Linux and middleware vendor Red Hat joined the OpenJDK
effort back in 2007. At the time Simon Phipps, then Sun’s chief
open source officer told InternetNews.com that he was hopeful that
IBM would join OpenJDK too.”