Project Harmony is seeking code donations from commercial vendors of Java Virtual Machines to kick-start the development of its new open source Java project.
"There is a lot of software out there that we are hoping can be donated. We are hoping that we will get seeded with some code from exiting production Virtual Machines," Geir Magnusson, director of the Apache Software Foundation, said at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco.

Several commercial software vendors in addition to Sun Microsystems have developed J2SE implementations, including BEA and IBM.

Magnusson stressed that talks are still in the early stages, and that no commitments about contributions have been made. "Until they do, we have no choice but to implement our own," he said.

Project Harmony is run by the Apache Foundation and aims to develop a Virtual Machine and runtime engine that is compatible with the official J2SE specification. The software would allow end users to run Java applications on desktop computers.

Although Sun makes its J2SE implementation available to end users for free, it has not released the source code.

An open source J2SE implementation could bring Java to new computing platforms, Magnusson contended.

The application is not yet available for Linux, for instance. "Java is a second class citizen in Linux right now because it isn't under an open source licence," he said.

Open source Java would also allow developers to easily build new applications on top of the open code, and could further foster the adoption of Java in developing economies that have a propensity towards open source.

Sun allows independent implementations of the J2SE specifications, but requires that they pass rigorous testing requirements before they can call themselves Java compliant.

The vendor has expressed fears that Project Harmony will lead to 'forking'. In a recent interview with vnunet.com Java creator James Gosling referred to the project as "destructive".

A fork occurs when a language is split into several different sublanguages that are incompatible with each other, thereby weakening the appeal of Java.

Although Project Harmony has no intention of creating forks, having the code available under an open source licence means that other parties could more easily create a fork.

But Magnusson contends that forks as a result of its open source Java are unlikely. Anybody who creates a new J2SE implementation based on Project Harmony still needs to pass the tests that Sun requires before they can call the software Java.