"Through these strategic agreements, Red Hat commits to contribute to the Java platform and distribute a compatible, open source Java software implementation," said Sacha Labourey, CTO of JBoss, a division of Red Hat, as RH today announced an agreement with Sun to advance open source Java software.

"Red Hat fully supports Sun’s courageous decision to open source Java technology. After more than 10 years of continuous leadership, the Java technology ecosystem will enter an era of accelerated innovation and benefit from extreme pervasiveness on a wide range of environments," Labourey continued.

Earlier this month, Red Hat Middleware LLC division was re-elected by program members of the Java Community Process (JCPSM) to the Executive Committee (EC) for the Standard/Enterprise Edition (SE/EE). Red Hat will serve as a voting member for three years, helping guide the evolution of Java technologies. The company currently leads the Web Beans Expert Group (JSR-299) and has made significant contributions in the past to specifications such as Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 (JSR-220).

"Sun welcomes Red Hat to the OpenJDK community," said Rich Green, executive vice president, Software at Sun Microsystems. "It is a vote of confidence to have Red Hat, a leader in open source, engaging with the community on such a broad scale. When we open-sourced our Java software implementation, we hoped to see just this kind of collaboration between the GNU/Linux world and the Java technology ecosystem. It is gratifying to see the promise of open-source Java technology coming true with Red Hat’s leadership."

Red Hat is the first major software vendor to license the Java SE Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK), in support of Java SE compatibility. To help foster innovation and advancement of the Java technology ecosystem, Red Hat will also share its developers' contributions with Sun as part of the OpenJDK community. These agreements pave the way for Red Hat to create a fully compatible, open source Java Development Kit (JDK) for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, including the Java Runtime Environment (JRE).

As a contributor, Red Hat will have full access to the OpenJDK code base as well as the Java SE 6 TCK to eventually deliver a JRE for Red Hat Enterprise Linux that would significantly enhance Java software applications. Red Hat customers will benefit from a highly optimized, accelerated runtime for JBoss Enterprise Middleware in a Linux environment.

Red Hat has signed Sun’s broad contributor agreement that covers participation in all Sun-led open source projects by all Red Hat engineers.

In addition, Red Hat has signed Sun’s OpenJDK Community TCK License Agreement. This agreement gives the company access to the test suite that determines whether an implementation of the Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE) platform that is derived from the OpenJDK project complies with the Java SE 6 specification.