Sun Microsystems last night posted what it calls a ‘Snapshot Releases’ of J2SE 6.0, code-named Mustang, marking them as available for developers to download. InfoWorld editor-at-large Paul Krill broke the news in Sun previews next version of Java. The snapshot is literally Build 12 of the forthcoming version of J2SE, which is still really very early in development. Sun, in fact, released J2SE 5.0 in September, so don’t expect to see a final version of Mustang running around the wild anytime soon. What the snapshots provide, according to Sun, is access to the latest features and fixes made to the forthcoming J2SE 6.0 release. As Paul reported, thus far the most significant themes of Mustang include ease of development, performance and Web services, and Sun estimates that a general release version of J2SE 6.0 will manifest in Spring of 2006. Sun’s Mark Reinhold explained the philosophy behind making such an early release available as an experiment in openness in his blog post. Caveat Emptor: Sun spelled out very clearly that this snapshot is not for the risk averse or the novice developer as it was, in Sun’s own words, only lightly tested before being posted for download. Technology Industry