James Gosling initiated Java language project in June 1991 for use in one of his many settop box projects. The language, initially called ‘Oak’ after an oak tree that stood outside
Gosling's office, also went by the name ‘Green’ and ended up later being renamed as Java,
from a list of random words.
Sun released the first public implementation as Java 1.0 in 1995. It promised Write Once,
Run Anywhere (WORA), providing no-cost run-times on popular platforms.
On 13 November, 2006, Sun released much of Java as free and open source software
under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
On 8 May, 2007, Sun finished the process, making all of Java's core code free and opensource, aside from a small portion of code to which Sun did not hold the copyright