The move, planned for Sun's JavaOne conference in San Francisco, acknowledges that the open-source software philosophy is important even in areas such as Java, where Sun has been reluctant to let ...

Sun Microsystems wants to send Java closer to the open-source world, yet keep it safe from harm. It will modify its licenses to make access to the Java source code easier, the Santa Clara, Calif ...

Source code for Java already is available and has been for 10 years, he said. The current model for Java is close to an open source model, Gosling said.

Source code for the Java Development Kit (JDK) would be redone in UTF-8 (Unicode Transformation Format) to facilitate better-defined encoding, under a plan afoot in the OpenJDK Java community.

Google's trying to make that job a little easier, introducing a new tool that automatically converts Java source code into Objective-C, which is used in iPad and iPhone apps.

"Project Peabody" adds two licenses that make it easier for outsiders to see the code. But Sun stops short of embracing open source.

In a move that reflects the growing power of the open-source programming movement, Sun Microsystems plans Monday to share a modest chunk of Java source code, an experimental user interface for ...