In response to an open letter from IBM asking Sun Microsystems Inc. to join the company in developing an open-source version of Java, Sun plans to meet with IBM to discuss the issue, Sun sources said. Sun officials planned to meet with IBM as early as Thursday to discuss the merits of whether the company should work with IBM on an independent project to create an open-source implementation of Java.
According to Sun, the company is in agreement with IBM"s letter in many ways—and over the last two years Sun has made "significant" Java contributions to open source through The Apache Group; portions of the XML processing engine, through the Web Pack contribution last year; and the Java 2 Enterprise Edition processing engine known as Tomcat. "Sun is closely evaluating the effectiveness of the process," a Sun spokesperson said. Sun said it will make an official statement about IBM"s offer later on Thursday.