Here is the thread on Slashdot regarding Sun’s Opensourcing of Java that makes a very interesting read. Some interesting quotes:
Wow.
This is a historical day.
That is all.
and
Wow! Despite all the rumours, I never really believed Sun would release Java under GPL instead of CDDL. Hats off to Sun.
and
This will remove, at a stroke, one of the largest issues of licence trouble in the *nix world.
and
Well, on a more practical note, this means that within a few months, I should be seeing a real, complete, working JRE sitting in the main repositories for Debian and Ubuntu. Sweet. We no longer have to go and fetch it ourselves or experiment with incomplete toolkits.
For the ideologues, knowing that there’s one less piece of non-free software on your system is a real comfort. For me, personally, all that apparently remains are ATI drivers and Flash Player.
Well, by the time I post it, there will be lot more interesting posts. Read the story on Slashdot!