TechCrunch is reporting this morning that Apple has joined the OpenJDK project, and will be open-sourcing the OS X implementation of Java. They are apparently continuing to support Java SE 6 on Snow Leopard, and will support it on Lion as well. Java SE 7 (when it finally arrives) will be available from Oracle.

As a new convert to the Mac as a Java development environment (just switched a couple of weeks ago) in a shop full of Java developers working on Macs (http://chariotsolutions.com), I think that I speak for all of my co-workers when I say that this is very welcome news.