OpenAJAX features more than 30 member companies and organizations, including IBM, BEA Systems, and Oracle. Sun will collaborate with the organization as it pursues its goals, which include identifying best practices and reaching a consensus on programming models around a reference implementation for tools interoperability. Wider AJAX adoption also is a goal of OpenAJAX, which was formed in February.

Sun has not been part of OpenAJAX until now for two reasons, said Dan Roberts, Sun director of marketing for developer tools. It was approached by IBM but the invitation went to the wrong group at Sun, and Sun, upon learning of the new initiative, feared OpenAJAX was too skewed toward the Eclipse open source tools platform, which rivals Sun's own NetBeans initiative.

"IBM did invite us, however, it didn't get to any of the groups that understood what OpenAJAX was," Roberts said.

After discussing OpenAJAX with IBM and finding that the organization is not Eclipse-centric, Sun decided to join, Roberts said.

"What we want to do is ensure with the rest of the OpenAJAX Alliance that AJAX technologies are patent-free, royalty-free, and freely available to developers," Roberts said. Some AJAX technologies have not met this criteria, he said.