Finally, some very good news for the Java community. For those who were worried about the future of Java on OSX, don't worry:  Apple have just announced that they will be working with Oracle on the OpenJDK project. Apple will contribute most of the key components, tools and technology required for Java SE 7 on Mac OS X. 

Following the announcement that Apple would not longer be maintaining further JDK updates on Mac OS X beyond the most recent update, this comes as very welcome news to Oracle:

“We are excited to welcome Apple as a significant contributor in the growing OpenJDK community,” said Hasan Rizvi, Oracle’s senior vice president of Development. “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. Combined with last month’s announcement of IBM joining the OpenJDK, the project now has the backing of three of the biggest names in software.”

And of course, Apple are happy to keep Java developers happy: 

“We’re delighted to be working with Oracle to insure that there continues to be a great version of Java on the Mac,” said Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “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.”

Apple also confirmed that Java SE 6 will continue to be available from Apple for Mac OS X Snow Leopard® and the upcoming release of Mac OS X Lion. Java SE 7 and future versions of Java for Mac OS X will be available from Oracle. 

Henrick has already blogged about this, answering some of questions that are likely to be on developers minds: 

Q: When will JDK 7 be available for OSX?

A: My expectation is that we will release on current supported platforms first, and that OSX support will follow later. The JDK 7 schedule can not easily accomodate large changes like the addition of a new platform.

This is great news. Once again we're seeing Oracle listening to community comments, and it's good to see that recent pleas to Apple to contribute their work to the OpenJDK haven't fallen on deaf ears. Kudos to both companies for a continued committment to Java.