At the moment, at least, it does not appear that Sun is moving in the direction of participating in the more broadly accepted Eclipse program. Roberts applauded the Eclipse Foundation for its recent decision to join the Java Community Process, of which Sun is a key participant.

"We're happy to welcome them into the JCP, though I am not a representative of the JCP," Roberts said.

Sun's decision in November to open-source Java, meanwhile, is being accommodated by NetBeans, Roberts said. Plug-ins and projects are in various stages of release to help developers get started with viewing code to make changes to the Standard and Enterprise editions of Java, Roberts said.