During an event at company headquarters, Sun officially released Java to the open source world, after much clamoring for several years by the developer community at large as well as by other vendors. Java variants released included the Standard, Micro, and Enterprise versions.

Sun, however, still will maintain a commercially licensed and indemnified version of Java while the community can extend the platform in an open source fashion. Open source contributions will even be considered for inclusion in Sun's commercial Java.

The open sourcing is "what I consider to actually be one of the most momentous changes on the landscape, not only for Sun but for the entire community," Schwartz said. "This is a really fundamental change in my view."

With the open source move, Sun sees a network effect in which a network becomes more valuable as more people join, Schwartz said. And Sun's business benefits as well, he added.

To attract Linux developers and promote compatibility, Sun of releasing Java under its own CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License) and opted instead for the Linux-friendly GPL 2 license.