A year ago this week Sun finally bowed to pressure and agreed to make Java a free, open source project. It was an odd move given Sun's strong resistance to making Java open source for a more than a decade.

Sun Microsystems is working with partners to make Java telecomsy for netbooks. The company hopes to deliver a modular version of Java Micro Edition (Java ME) "sometime" next year, which would let netbooks running Java offer more of the kinds of features used in cell phones and are currently enabled on such devices through the Java APIs.

The IcedTea Project has completed a major milestone by passing the Java Test Compatibility Kit (TCK). What all that means is that the IcedTea Project has achieved what Sun promised to do over two years ago at JavaOne: make Java completely open-source. Red Hat's Fedora 9 will be the first Linux distribution to ship with an OpenJDK binary, and other Linux distributions will probably follow.

Sun Microsystems last week said it will soon open source the core components of Sun Java System Web Proxy and Sun Java System Web Server 7.0 under the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license. The Web and Proxy source code will be released later this year.

The claim that .Net is a multiplatform standard is rendered false: .NET developers are further locked into a single vendor. Java, in contrast, is fully open source and has the developer community.

Red Hat has signed on to participate in Sun Microsystems' open-source Java Standard Edition (SE) project, OpenJDK, and to coordinate its own Java development efforts for Linux with the project.

What has happened in the year since Sun Microsystems released the source code for Java? While end users might be starting to wonder, those most involved in the building of the free Java community describe a thriving community that, after one year, is still working hard to reinvent itself.

Ever wondered how much your contribution was worth to a project? If you are a Java developer helping out one of the hundreds of open source Java projects, head over to SourceKibitzer. It's a social network of Java developers that provides various metrics for open source Java projects.

If Oracle ends up owning Sun Microsystems, it's got a one-off opportunity to correct the mistakes of the past when it comes to working with open source on Java. The database giant should relax Sun's tight control over the Java Community Process (JCP), the body responsible for stewarding Java.