Sun Microsystems has announced plans to kick-start the development of its open source projects.

The company will run six contests with prizes of $175,000 in an attempt to bring new developers into its open source fold.

"Sun hopes that the opportunity for individual developers to be recognised for their contributions will also drive a wave of excitement and collaborative energy," said Simon Phipps, chief open source officer at Sun.

The six competitions will be hosted by GlassFish, NetBeans, OpenOffice, OpenJDK, OpenSolaris and OpenSPARC.

OpenSolaris will distribute the money in the form of a $100,000 open design contest along with a $75,000 research grant for undergraduate students.

OpenSPARC will divide its prize money into eight smaller competitions, while OpenOffice will host contests in six categories within the productivity suite including its Open Document Format.

GlassFish will place the money in its GlassFish Awards Programme, and NetBeans will distribute the money in a series of grants.

OpenJDK will run a two-tier contest in which proposals and finished projects will be judged.