SAP joins OpenJDK

SAP is joining the OpenJDK project which develops the official open source implementation of Java. SAP's Volker Simonis announced on the OpenJDK mailing list that the company had signed the Oracle Contributor Agreement. This means SAP employees can officially engage in discussions on the OpenJDK mailing lists and contribute patches and enhancements.

SAP, the largest software company in Europe, is a long-time licensee of Sun's – now Oracle's – Java source and has ported it to all 14 platforms that the company supports. It had previously called for "Freedom for Java" during Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems, looking for changes in the Java Community Process.

The OpenJDK project develops an open source implementation of the Java Standard Edition (Java SE). In the past, Sun and, later, Oracle developers had taken the lead role in the project, with Red Hat engineers working with them. Last year, they were joined by IBM and Apple; both companies having decided to abandon their independent Java development projects and contribute to OpenJDK. Oracle recently announced that OpenJDK 7 will be the reference implementation for Java 7, due to be released on 28 July.

(djwm)