No doubt "licencing issues" will be cited as the reason why the transition of Java to Open Source is taking its while.

I strongly suspect that this is not the whole story.

Having attempted to work with the OpenOffice.org source code {which originated as the closed source StarOffice} and seen what thoroughly awful techniques people thought they could get away with because they never thought anybody was ever going to see the source code, I can say it's more probably because Java is riddled with embarrassing bits that Sun want to get rid of before letting anyone else see the code!

Well, if that reasoning was genuine, and this is the typical response of someone from 'the community', it is absolutely no wonder people are loath to open up their projects.

Open up an Office compatible Office suite - something that the pure open source community had failed to produce in it's own timescale - and all you get is someone criticising your code for being dodgy.

Yep, that's exactly the kind of attitude that is going to encourage proprietary vendors to join the world of software engineering pedants.

The Java SE source is already available for you to download and have a look (good, bad, ugly - you be the judge), over here:

http://download.java.net/jdk6/

If you don't like the current license terms, then you will need to wait for the Lawyers to finish hammering out the details of an 'open' source license. In the mean-time, I claim the source is out there for all interested parties to see.

So, take a look and decide for yourself.