Sun also launched jxta.org, an Open Source project where developers can collaborate to evolve Project JXTA and create innovative, distributed services and applications that allow users to naturally and quickly find, get, and use information.
The Web is evolving in both depth and breadth into an ‘expanded Web’, which makes it challenging to efficiently communicate and access resources on the Internet, said Mike Clary, vice president, Project JXTA. Sun is offering a unified approach to address this next phase of distributed computing, an approach that will enable users to quickly and easily Find it, Get it, Use it.
As more and more content and resources migrate to the Web, it’s getting difficult and time consuming to naturally access information stored on multiple networks and across disparate platforms. The initial release of Project JXTA is a cross-platform Java[tm] technology-based implementation, and Sun has initiated a community project to develop a C implementation.
Project JXTA fulfills a vision I’ve had for 25 years, said Bill Joy, Sun’s chief scientist and co-founder. I wanted a computing model based on the systems approach from UNIX(R) platforms, the object-oriented, portable code capabilities from Java technology, and the universal syntax for describing portable data from XML. So, we started Project JXTA, which has become a platform independent, language agnostic, Open Source technology to enable new and innovative distributed applications.
During the incubation phase of Project JXTA– which is documented on jxta.org– Sun’s Project JXTA team worked closely with a core group of industry leaders. To drive innovation, ubiquity, and new application development, Sun has now released the source code of JXTA under an Apache-style, Open Source license to involve the community as early as possible. The infrastructure for jxta.org is being provided by CollabNet, a leader in collaborative software development solutions based on open source concepts.
By opening up the Project JXTA source code, Sun is demonstrating that it is committed to the Open Source community and understands the value of collaborative software development, said Brian Behlendorf, co-founder and CTO of CollabNet. This is the third major Open Source Network that CollabNet has created for Sun, and we look forward to working with Sun to create a strong development community around Project JXTA.
