Red Hat and Sun Collaborate on Java Development

Published: November 6, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Commerical Linux distributor Red Hat, which also has a big stake in the adoption of Java thanks to its acquisition last year of JBoss, a maker of open source middleware, yesterday announced that it has partnered with Sun Microsystems, the creator of Java, to help evolve Java technologies.

Specifically, Red Hat has signed what is called a contributor agreement with Sun, which enables Red Hat's software engineers to be formally engaged in all Java-related development efforts officially led by Sun. Red Hat also announced that it also signed a license agreement for Sun's OpenJDK Community Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK), which ensures that the Java Platform Standard Edition (commonly called Java SE) that Red Hat derives from Sun's open source code is compliant with the Java SE 6 specification. Red Hat is, according to Sun, the first major software vendor to license the Java SE TCK, and this is important only because all of the pieces of the Java stack have not yet been open sourced.

One of the early effects of the licensing agreement is that it gives the IcedTea project created by Red Hat, which merges some Fedora Linux and JBoss application development code into a single environment, including functionality that is still closed source (but free) in the Java stack.

Red Hat has the dominant commercial Linux operating system in the world, and became a major player in Java middleware after the JBoss buy. Now, Red Hat needs to create a set of open source development tools that bring it all together in one stack for its Linux customers. Some customers don't mind using best-of-breed or piecemeal parts, but there is a larger base of customers who like to stop once to do their platform shopping. Small and medium businesses like the fact hat they are familiar with Windows and can buy the whole shooting match of systems software from Microsoft; ditto for legacy midrange shops, who often do the same thing. If Red Hat wants to compete in the volume market, it has to offer a full, integrated stack, from the development tools down through middleware to the operating system and file systems.

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