Apple Reveal Further OpenJDK Details

Following Friday's announcement that Apple would be contributing to the OpenJDK project, Apple have received a lot of respect from the Java community. To help set expectatons,  Mike Swingler provided a little more information on Apple's contribution to the OpenJDK, on the Apple mailing list.

To set expectations, the first drop will be effectively a "SoyLatte"-level implementation, but is packaged as a Universal Mac OS X .jdk bundle that can be dropped directly into /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines. Over the coming weeks and months, we will be adding pieces and parts of our Java SE 6 implementation to the public project, and will cut over from using an X11-based AWT to a Cocoa NSEvent-based one with a new OpenGL-backed graphics layer.

There are several parts of our Java SE 6 implementation (like the AWT widgets) that are not contributable, in much the same way that several parts of Oracle's implementation are not. However, the vast majority of our Swing Aqua Look and Feel implementation is, as well as the eAWT/eIO API. We intend to host the legacy AWT widget set using lightweight peers, but that work is still in progress.

With both IBM and Apple behind the OpenJDK project, we are starting to see a lot of positives for the Java community. The ideal (but unlikely) scenario would be to have  Oracle and Google come to a resolution, and for Google to join up with the other powers on the OpenJDK project.