Brief History of Java

In 1990, Sun Microsystems began a research project named Green to develop the C and C++ based language. James Gosling, a network software designer was assigned to this project. Gosling’s solution to the problems of C++ was a new language called Oak after an oak tree outside his window at Sun. In May 1995, Sun Microsystems formally announced Java (Oak was renamed Java). Finally, in 1996, Java arrived in the market as a programming language.

With the advent of Java 2 (released initially as J2SE 1.2 in December 1998), new versions had multiple configurations built for different types of platforms. For example, J2EE targeted enterprise applications and the greatly stripped-down version J2ME for mobile applications (Mobile Java). J2SE designated the Standard Edition. In 2006, for marketing purposes, Sun renamed new J2 versions as Java EE, Java ME, and Java SE, respectively.

On November 13, 2006, Sun released much of Java as free and open source software, (FOSS), under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). On May 8, 2007, Sun finished the process, making all of Java’s core code available under free software/open-source distribution terms.

Table: Major Release Versions of Java.

Version	Date
JDK 1.0	January 23, 1996
JDK 1.1	February 19, 1997
J2SE 1.2	December 8, 1998
J2SE 1.3	May 8, 2000
J2SE 1.4	February 6, 2002
J2SE 5.0	September 30, 2004
Java SE 6	December 11, 2006
Java SE 7	July 28, 2011