Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), has an editorial on Newsforge today entitled “The Curious Incident of Sun in the Night-Time” (curiously titled).

In summary, Stallman thinks that the Java licensing announcement that Sun made at JavaOne isn’t big news. The announcement he refers to is “Sun Recasts Java Licensing for GNU/Linux and OpenSolaris Communities.

The big news was not that, it was this - “Sun promises to open-source Java“. Yes, the promise to open source Java is open-ended, but it’s a publicly-stated intent.

I find Stallman’s editorial a bit misleading. From his piece…

Our community has been abuzz with the rumor that Sun has made its implementation Java free software (or “open source”). Community leaders even publicly thanked Sun for its contribution. What is Sun’s new contribution to the FLOSS community? Nothing. Absolutely nothing–and that’s what makes the response to this non-incident so curious. - Richard Stallman

Umm….no. It’s not ‘nothing’. It’s an intention. I’d agree that their licensing announcement wasn’t much news. In fact, Red Hat doesn’t like the new licensing model. However, what Stallman is doing here is confusing public excitement on the plan to open source Java with a press release about a new licensing model.

Sun didn’t do a press release regarding the intention to open source Java.