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The deal opens up the way for Red Hat staff to contribute to Sun Microsystems’s Open Source projects says the North Carolina-based Linux distributor. Red Hat promises to give the results back to the Open JDK Community. The agreement can be seen as a significant first step towards producing an open source Java-Development Kit (JDK) including a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The Contributor Agreement covers the development of proprietary code for a Java implementation; the TCK License Agreement (TCK = Technology Compatibility Kit) allows for synchronization with the Java specifications.

According to company sources, Red Hat will be looking for closer tie-in with the Icedtea project for a start. Red Hat launched the project early in June with the aim of replacing the remaining proprietary components in the Sun’s partly open Java Development Kits (Open JDK) with GPL’d software as of November 2006. Red Hat’s middleware division, Jboss, Red Hat Middleware LLC, has contributed to the development of Java technology as a member of the non-free Java Community Process program since 2004, where it contributes to the development of Java specifications as a member of the Executive Committee for the SE / EE Java platforms.

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