It's no surprise that Sun Microsystems is making its core Java platform freely available; what is somewhat unexpected is the vendor's choice of open source license.

Sun Microsystems Inc. has announced the long awaited release of a fully buildable open Java Development Kit (OpenJDK) for Java SE under GPLv2. They're also creating an interim governance board and ...

Sun is to open source the last closed-source parts of Java, a move that should make it possible to fully integrate the software into Linux distributions.