A new initiative is underway to allow users to naturally and quickly find, get, and use information on the "expanded Web".
Driving the next phase of distributed network computing, Sun Microsystems has announced a prototype research project that will enable easy access to peers and resources on the rapidly emerging, multi-dimensional expanded Web.
"Find it, get it, use it. It should be as simple as that. We're looking to define an innovative, unified and natural approach to accessing information on the Internet," says Stefano Mattiello, managing director of Sun Microsystems SA.
"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. Through our Project JXTA, we're offering a unified approach to address this next phase of distributed computing."
Mattiello points out that 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 big plusses with JXTA technology are that it is platform independent, language agnostic, and demonstrates Sun's commitment to collaborative, open source software development."
The initial release of Project JXTA is a cross-platform Java technology-based implementation, and Sun has initiated a community project to develop a C implementation.
"Project JXTA fulfils a vision I've had for 25 years," says Bill Joy, Sun's chief scientist and co-founder. "I wanted a computing model based on the systems approach from Unix 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."
On announcing Project JXTA, Sun also launched jxta.org, an open source project where developers can collaborate to evolve Project JXTA and create innovative, distributed services and 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 licence to involve the community as early as possible. The infrastructure for jxta.org is being provided by CollabNet, a leading provider of 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," says Brian Behlendorf, co-founder and CTO of CollabNet. "This is Sun's third major open source community site with us, and we look forward to working with Sun to create a strong development community around Project JXTA." For more information, go to www.jxta.org
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