Sun Microsystems executives led by Rich Green, executive vice president of Software, are slated next Monday evening to provide an update on plans to offer Java in an open source format. Last month, Sun co-CTO Robert Brewin suggested in an interview with InfoWorld that the open sourcing process is likely to be done in incremental steps, with more components of the platform to be available via open source by June 2007. Bowing to industry pressures, Sun officials said at the JavaOne conference in May that Java would be offered via open source, but they offered no timetable.It remains to be seen what exactly will be the difference in offering Java via open source when a lot of the technology is available for use by anybody, anyway. It’s been suggested to me, however, that Java currently is available in a restrictive manner similar to the Microsoft Shared Source program for accessing Microsoft’s code. Software Development