RedHat have annouced they are forking the OpenJDK code base to develop their own JDK, with the intention of replacing the ‘encumbered’ portions (parts of the prior JDK that Sun can not legally open source), with code from the IcedTea project.
IcedTea is a open source project to provide an easier to use build framework for building the JDK, plus aims to provide re-writes for the encumbered parts of the current JDK.