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As Sun resists the call from ESR and IBM to open source Sun's implementation of Java, another Java implementation may already have been installed on your hard drive.

If you use a recent version of Linux such as Fedora Core 2, or Cygwin, you may already have installed the GNU GCJ compiler, and the GNU Classpath class library.

Although not as complete as the Sun JDK, the GCJ/Classpath combination can compile Java bytecodes to native executables, and can already run many open source Java applications, including Eclipse and Ant. I wrote about it for OCI's Java News Brief in January 2003.

So Sun or no Sun, Open Source Java is here and now. Sure, it's not as complete as we would like, but it is useful already and has the potential to do more. And it comes with my Linux distribution.

I mentioned 29 days ago that I was ready to switch sides from Sun to ESR/IBM. My wish as a user of Java technology is very simple: Make is so that the Sun JDK can be bundled in the Fedora Core CDs (or other Linux distributions). While I'm waiting, I'll be using GNU GCJ, and (very reluctantly) SWT.

I understand there's going to be a panel discussion about "a new community and development model". I sure hope someone would address the issues raised in Tom Tromey's blog.