Sun officials talk OpenJDK, GlassFish, and iPhone
Sun officials also discussed progress of OpenJDK, which is the open-source Java development kit for Java Platform, Standard Edition. About 96 percent of Java code has been cleared for use in the open-sourcing of Java, said Mark Reinhold, Sun chief engineer for Java Platform Standard Edition.

Afoot is a "kitchen sink" language project to explore new language features that could wind up in Java. Another effort project is intended to improve performance of languages other than Java, such as Ruby and Python, to run on the HotSpot Virtual Machine.

OpenJDK is switching to the Mercurial version control system, enabling contributions from the community at large. Meanwhile, an OpenJDK governance board has been formed to oversee OpenJDK.

Red Hat has created a project called Ice Tea to make OpenJDK run better in a Linux environment, Reinhold said.

Asked about the role of the Apache Harmony project, an open-source Java project that preceded Sun's November 2006 open-sourcing of Java, Phipps said it was great to have an independent implementation of the Java specifications. But he stressed he favored a strong OpenJDK community as well.

Meanwhile, Sun officials put the ball in Apple Computer's court as far as porting of Java to the popular iPhone, which currently does not support Java. iPhone is a closed platform, said Murdock.

"Even if we did put Java on the iPhone, Apple would take it off again," Phipps added.

Another project, the open-source GlassFish application server, entails development of projects like Grizzly, a high-performance I/O infrastructure. Other projects based around GlassFish include Japex for Web services performance and Hudson, which provides an integration tool.

Version 2 of GlassFish was launched three weeks ago. The next version will support such languages as JRuby, PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor), and Scala.

Also at the event:

* Phipps said the data format in Microsoft Office is partially open because Sun "shamed" Microsoft into opening it.
* Sun's Josh Berkus, who serves on the core development team for the open-source, multi-party PostgreSQL database, said the beta release of 8.3 of the database was released last week. It features improvements in performance and consistency as well Visual C++ capabilities. Storage has made more efficient by as much as 20 percent. The final release is expected in seven to nine weeks. Manageability improvements are planned for a future release.
* There are no plans to open-source the Java trademark, said Tiki Dare, Sun director of trademarks. It is unclear what such a move would mean anyway, Dare said. She questioned whether this might mean that the trademark could be used on any product whether or not it meets Java quality control standards.