Since 2006, the OpenJDK project has gradually turned the development of the Java SE reference implementation into a friendly open source project with an active and diverse community. In order to do so, the project had to invent its own ways of encouraging and nurturing open innovation across organizational boundaries - using distributed version control systems and sidestreams of development to allow the infrastructure for participation to gradually emerge from the needs and capabilities of its community, thereby extending the permeable development model established in GNU Classpath further to OpenJDK.

Meanwhile, JDK 7 is looming on the horizon, the first JDK release to include community-led features from OpenJDK. In this session, we'll look into different examples of open innovation that are scheduled to become JDK 7 features, like type annotations, improved concurrency support, small language changes, JVM extensions for dynamic language support or the XRender Java 2D pipeline.

We'll also look at porting projects like IcedTea, Zero, Shark and the BSD port, which explore a more classical axis of open innovation, and to the array of innovative projects outside the OpenJDK project itself like IKVM and CACAO which use OpenJDK as a provider of components to assemble and re-assemble for exploring new niches.

Finally, we'll discuss how to participate in OpenJDK development, fixing the bug one always wanted to hunt down, exploring a new project, or adding the one feature that was missing all those years.

Keywords: Java, OpenJDK, JDK 7, Open Source, permeable development, open innovation

Target audience: Java and open source developers. They'd get insight into the open source development process and community growth behind the next release of the platform.