Java Platform: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 12:19, 11 May 2007

Revision as of 21:17, 11 May 2007

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The Java class libraries serve three purposes within the Java Platform. Like other standard code libraries, they provide the programmer a well-known set of functions to perform common tasks, such as maintaining lists of items or performing complex string parsing. In addition, the class libraries provide an abstract interface to tasks that would normally depend heavily on the hardware and operating system. Tasks such as network access and file access are often heavily dependent on the native capabilities of the platform. The Java java.net and java.io libraries implement the required native code internally, then provide a standard interface for the Java applications to perform those tasks. Finally, some underlying platforms may not support all of the features a Java application expects. In these cases, the class libraries can either emulate those features using whatever is available, or provide a consistent way to check for the presence of a specific feature.

Currently the class libraries included in the [[JRE]] are still proprietary software. There is an ongoing project of the [[Free Software Foundation]] for writing a compatible free set of libraries. It is called [[GNU Classpath]]. On [[November 13]] [[2006]], Sun announced that all of the Java source code will be released entirely under the [[GNU General Public License]], by March 2007.<ref>{{cite web

| url=http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2006-11/sunflash.20061113.1.xml

| title=Sun Open Sources Java Platform

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| date=[[2006-11-13]]

| accessdate = 2006-11-13}}</ref>

Following their promise, Sun released the complete [[source code]] of the Class library under GPL on [[May 8]], [[2007]], except some limited parts that were licensed by Sun from 3rd parties who did not want their code to be released under an open-source license <ref>{{cite web

| url=http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/announce/2007-May.txt

| title=Open JDK is here!

| publisher=Sun Microsystems

| date=[[2007-05-08]]

| accessdate=2007-05-09}}</ref> [http://openjdk.java.net/]. Sun's goal is to replace the parts that remain closed with alternative implementations and make the class library completely open.

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