Sun Microsystems has open sourced JDK under GPL v2 as promised. The announcement was made the ongoing 2007 JavaOne Conference. The JDK is now available and is accessible from OpenJDK, a resource to enable collaboration in the open source community.
However, some part of the JDK are owned by third parties who are still not inline with the open sourcing. These parts will be available as binary plugs. Sun is also in the process of setting up a OpenJDK governance body. Rich Sands gives the details, and mentions that the interim body is composed of Doug Lea, Dalibor Topic , Fabiane Bizinella Nardon, Mark Reinhold and Simon Phipps. It will write the constitution and hold elections to establish the governance body.
Take a look at the FAQ for more reading. The Open Source JDK Portal is a good place to track developments.
