Java One Tuesday Keynote - Announcements, Announcements, Announcements

Rich Green had a number of very interesting announcements today. You'll hear about them from others, but I wanted to share the ones that interested me most and give you my take if I feel like spouting my own opinions

First of all, Rich announced that Sun has completed the process of open sourcing Java, a promise they made a year ago and which has now been finalized. Also of interest was a vague-ish announcement about the opening of the TCK. I couldn't fully understand the implications, but I'm sure we'll learn more in the days to come.

Another very interesting announcement was of a new "bundle" of tools, technologies, and programs called JavaFX. The intention of JavaFX is to make Java available to "humanity" (e.g. consumers) on a much wider scale. Around this were two big announcements.

First, Rich and James Gosling announced a new scripting language called JavaFX Script that is intended to make it very easy for creative content producers to build rich internet content on the Java Platform. This seemed to me to be a very strong response to the other RIA platforms out there such as Adobe Flex and Apollo. I'm interested to see more of what this looks like, but what I saw demonstrated looked very interesting indeed.

The other big announcement was Java FX Mobile, which takes a full Java SE platform and puts it on the mobile platform. Exactly what this means is a bit vague to me, but what caught my attention was that it is the full Java SE platform and that architecturally it provides an operating platform that runs on top of the device hardware. As a non-mobile developer, this surprised me, but I guess traditionally the hardware and the operating environment are very hard-wired together. So Java FX Mobile is like a Java OS for many different devices. It will be produced in an open fashion and available for anyone to take and deploy to their device.

Jonathan then got up with a gentleman from the UN who is in charge of bringing about positive social change through youth sports. Their vision is to use Java and Java FX Mobile and make it available on mobile devices that are affordable to everyone, and then this platform can be used to enable social change. As an example, Scott McNealy stood up and talked about Curriki, something he has been behind for a while now to bring the full K-12 educational curriculum to anybody anywhere, absolutely free. A very interesting vision - using technology to enable social change, rather than just a new game. I hope it's more than just marketing spin on a greedy goal to get everyone on the Internet and buying stuff, but a true vision where everybody wins.

More later, off to the session with Francois and the Zimbra folks talking about using Java DB to take Zimbra offline. I have what I call a "leftovers badge", where I can get it only if the true paying attendees have all gotten in and there is still space. So wish me luck!