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Conscious of its new position at center stage, the Eclipse Foundation is working to create a clockwork update schedule so that partners relying on Eclipse technology can align their own development plans. In June it shipped Callisto, the first in a planned annual series of synchronized releases of updates for a number of integrated Eclipse projects.

4. Sun's Open-Source Java Plans
The question "When will you open-source Java?" has plagued Sun for years. Newly promoted CEO Jonathan Schwartz opened JavaOne this year by committing to finally make it so. Now questions focus on how Sun will follow through on that commitment.

Significant swaths of Java source code are already publicly available. The bigger stumbling block for would-be Java innovators is licensing. Outside developers frequently complain that Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun exerts too much legal control over the Java intellectual property it owns. Java's governing body, the Java Community Process, also draws fire from participants who view it as too slow and bureaucratic.

Sun executives say they're working on plans for licensing and governing a fully open-sourced Java stack, but few new details have emerged since JavaOne.

5. The Looming Vista Wave
Updates of Microsoft's most visible applications -- Windows, Office and Internet Explorer -- are all queued up for coordinated release when Vista, the next-gen Windows operating system, is finally ready.

Five years' work has gone into the software updates, and Microsoft executives including CEO Steve Ballmer call the Vista wave the biggest product overhaul in the company's history. For months headlines have focused on Vista's delays. The more lasting issue will be how well the applications are received when they ship, whether that's in January (as Microsoft claims) or later in 2007 (as many analysts predict).

Vista is built around the new .Net 3.0 framework (formerly WinFX). Its features, including the Windows Presentation Framework (code-named Avalon), significantly advance the tools programmers have to work with in building Windows applications. But until Vista is in widespread use, developers will need to either postpone Vista-dependent projects or split their efforts between supporting Microsoft's new and old operating systems.

Conscious of the uptake lag its last-shipping Vista will face, Microsoft, Redmond, Wash., recently released a preview version of .Net 3.0 adapted to run on Windows XP.

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