Sun to offer open-source Java details

On the eve of the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo conference next week, Sun Microsystems will provide more detail about its plan to make Java open-source software. Rich Green, executive vice president of software, is scheduled to offer further details about the plan at a meeting Monday evening.

Sun is in the process of releasing the rest of its software portfolio as open source, but had held out for years with Java for fears that the technology would be hijacked or forked into incompatible versions. In the meantime, Mono, an open-source implementation of Microsoft's .Net rival to Java, has gained a foothold thanks to support from Novell and others.