Good grief. Yet again, Sun makes it to my weblog with an embarrassing move toward “opening” its source code. The Java Compatibility Kit (JCK) has been released to the public, via a “read-only” license. Graham Hamilton, a Sun employee, posted a weblog entry on java.net about it, which led to some interesting posts. The best comment to me was Dalibor Topic’s. The JCK release even drew the ire of John Mitchell, the head dude for java.net, who refers to the release as part of ‘Sun’s mealy-mouthed, half-assed, Janus-faced approach to “opening” up Java’. Like the Schwartz quote about the JCP and Linux and the Java Desktop, this latest step belies a gross misunderstanding of what it would mean to open up Java.

I wish I had time to write more about this “read-only” license, but I do not. This is the gist; you can look at the source code, but you cannot compile or run it. However, you are allowed to remember what you saw. Sound insane? Read the post; that’s pretty much what it says.

Won’t it be funny when the free alternatives do match up? And for those of you who mock those of us who believe they will, look only as far as your regular, everyday tools for Java development. There was a time when Tomcat, open source IDEs, and JUnit were scoffed as well.