Contents - Cultural View

OpenJDK 241
Inclusion in software distributions
As of May 2008, the Fedora 9 [24] [25] and Ubuntu 8.04 [26] distributions were released with OpenJDK, based
completely on free and open source code. [27]
In June 2008, it was announced that IcedTea 6 (as the packaged version of OpenJDK on Fedora 9) has passed the
Technology Compatibility Kit tests and can claim to be a fully compatible Java 6 implementation. [28]
On July 12, 2008, Debian accepted OpenJDK-6 in unstable [29] [30] , and it is now in stable [31] . OpenJDK is also
available on openSUSE [32] , and also Red Hat Enterprise Linux and its derivatives such as CentOS [33] .
Since August 2008, OpenJDK 7 is runnable on Mac OS X and other BSD distributions. [34]
In July 2009, OpenJDK binary build for Ubuntu 9.04 passed all of the compatibility tests in the Java SE 6 JCK. [35]
Status
Supported JDK versions
OpenJDK was initially based only on the JDK 7.0 version of the Java platform. [36]
Since February 15, 2008, there are two separate OpenJDK projects:
• The main OpenJDK [9] project, which is based on the JDK 7.0 version of the Java platform,
• The JDK 6 [3] project, which provides an Open-source version of Java 6.0. [37]
Compiler and Virtual Machine
Sun's Java compiler, javac, and HotSpot (the virtual machine), are now under a GPL license.
Class library
As of May 2008, the only part of the Class library that remains proprietary and closed-source (4% as of May 2007
for OpenJDK 7 [38] , and less than 1% as of May 2008 and OpenJDK 6 [24] ) is [39] [40] the SNMP implementation [40] .
Since the first May 2007 release, Sun Microsystems, with the help of the community, has released as free and
open-source software or replaced with free and open-source alternatives almost all the encumbered code:
• All the audio engine code, including the software synthesizer, has been released as Open-source. [40] [41] The
closed-source software synthesizer has been replaced by a new synthesizer developed specifically for OpenJDK
called Gervill [42] ,
• All cryptography classes used in the Class library have been released as Open-source [43] ,
[44] [45] [46]
• The code that scales and rasterizes fonts has been replaced by FreeType
• The native color management system has been replaced by LittleCMS. [45] There is a pluggable layer in the JDK,
so that the commercial version can use the old color management system and OpenJDK can use LittleCMS.
• The anti-aliasing graphics rasterizer code has been replaced by the Open-sourced Pisces renderer used in the
phoneME project. [45] [47] [48] This code is fully functional, but still needs some performance enhancements [49] ,
• The JavaScript plugin has been open-sourced (the Rhino JavaScript engine itself was open-sourced from the
beginning). [50]