Sun during the next quarter also plans to talk about the governance and licensing model for the open sourcing of Java. Governance involves how the open source Java community will be formed and who can contribute. Under pressure from the community at large, Sun at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco in May announced intentions to offer Java under an open source format. The open sourcing is to be done in phases.

Recognizing the growing popularity of dynamic scripting languages, a Sun official acknowledged that the Java platform and its virtual machine format may outlast the Java language itself.

"We constantly think of the fact that Java as a language may go away," said Jeet Kaul, executive director of Java EE and App Platform Infrastructure at Sun. Sun currently is looking at support for dynamic languages that have become popular.

"If these languages get more traction, we will have more support for them," Kaul said.

"The platform, the virtual machine stuff, will be around and we will do other languages," Kaul said. "The demise of the platform is greatly exaggerated."