When Apple announced last month that Java had been deprecated on the Mac OS, it seemed like bad news for Java developers (in what seems to be a string of bad news for Java). But today Oracle and Apple announced the OpenJDK project for Mac OS.
According to the companies’ joint statement, Apple will contribute the key pieces of technology necessary for a Java SE 7 implementation on Mac OS X “including a 32-bit and 64-bit HotSpot-based Java virtual machine, class libraries, a networking stack and the foundation for a new graphical client.” The move will make Apple’s Java technology available to the open source community.
Sponsor
Hasan Rizvi, Oracle’s Senior VP of Development says that “”The availability of Java on Mac OS X plays a key role in the cross-platform promise of the Java platform. The Java developer community can rest assured that the leading edge Java environment will continue to be available on Mac OS X in the future.”
Apple also confirmed that Java SE 6 will contnue to be available from Apple for Mac OS X Snow Leopard as well as the upcoming OS X Lion. But future versions of Java will come from Oracle. As Apple’s Bertrand Serlet notes, “The best way for our users to always have the most up to date and secure version of Java will be to get it directly from Oracle.”
Commenting on today’s announcement on his blog, James Gosling, the “father of Java,” asks, “The two questions that only time can answer are: will both parties actually deliver? and how will this work with Apple’s software update center?”
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.