Even though it’s been only 24 hours since the announcement, you’d have to be living under a rock if you haven’t heard that Sun has taken Java open source with a GPL license.

I’ve spoken to short of a few gillion people since yesterday and the opinions on the impact of this move are varied. The question as it relates to the world of financial technology is whether this really matters? At first it’s easy to dismiss this move as a desperate act. Some of my colleagues correctly pointed out that no financial firm is going to invest resources into developing enhanced versions of the Java platform. OK, I conceed you that one, but this is sure to be of use to firms such as Azul systems an oppurtinity to contribute more in the space of high performance.

Now I would not suggest that such companies would push out their own lucrative technology into the public space, but I suspect that they are now in a place where they can contribute to changes in Java that would enhance the ability to offer such technology in the first place.