"Sun Microsystems gave a first indication Tuesday of plans for
its new peer-to-peer initiative by buying a small start-up that is
building a new kind of search engine."
"Sun gave the world an early glimpse of its new "Jxta"
(pronounced Jux-ta) program last month, calling for help from the
open-source community. Jxta, although still in the early stages, is
designed to be a standard, open technology platform on which other
peer-to-peer services can run."
"As a possible foundation for a wide array of Net-based services
from Sun as well as other companies, the Jxta initiative was seen
as potential competition for Microsoft's proprietary .Net Web
services plans. Sun chief scientist Bill Joy said last month that
Sun plans its own set of peer-to-peer services and wants the
open-source software in place to make them possible."