Sun's November 2006 Announcement
In 13 November 2006, Sun released its compiler, javac, under the GNU General Public License.
As of September 2007, as well as javac, Sun has released the code of HotSpot (the virtual machine) and almost all the Java Class Library as free software.
Following their promise to release a fully buildable JDK based almost completely on free and open source code in the first half of 2007, Sun released the complete source code of the Class library under the GPL on May 8, 2007, except some limited parts that were licensed by Sun from 3rd parties who did not want their code to be released under a free software licence. Sun has stated that it aims to replace the parts that remain proprietary and closed source with alternative implementations and make the class library completely free and open source. Since there's some encumbered code in the JDK, Sun will continue to use that code in commercial releases until it's replaced by fully functional free and open-source alternatives.
Read more about this topic: Free Java Implementations
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