Sun, Apple discuss iPhone

Sun's pursuit to have Java applications run on Apple's iPhone gained momentum as the two firms continued holding talks about the idea, while acknowledging a third party's efforts towards the same goal, says IB Times.

There are concerns of whether Apple's iPhone SDK agreement would permit Java to be put on its popular new device.

Sun is working with a third party, Innaworks, to bring Java applications to the iPhone.

Sun is to open-source the last closed-source parts of Java, a move that should make it possible to fully integrate the software into Linux distributions, states ZDNet.co.uk.

Rich Sands, Sun's group manager for developer marketing, confirmed that Sun expects the work to be completed by the end of this year.

Most of Java has already been opened up, barring a few elements that had been held back because Sun did not own the rights to them. These rights seem to have been renegotiated, or are being renegotiated - at the time of writing Sun had not given further details on this point.

The Java Card Forum and Sun presented the specifications for Java Card 3.0 at the SIMPosium 2008 in Berlin, says Heise Security.

For the first time, there will be two variants: the Classic and Connected Edition. The former is mainly a continuation of the Java card specifications for 2.2.2 and will be used in bank cards and SIM cards.

The Connected Edition offers APIs for such security functions as java.security and javax.microedition.pki in addition to network access (javax.microedition.io).