Sun has announced that the Sun Spots are now fully open source. This means that the API as well as the Squawk VM are now fully open. The Squak VM itself is an interesting project. I will be curious to see how it compares against google’s Dalvik VM on small devices (that is whenever google releases or tells us more about Dalvik).
The press release seems to imply that the Sun Spot hardware will also be open source:
The open source release of the versatile Java technology-based Sun SPOT platform will include hardware, software and the Squawk Virtual Machine.
but this is the only mention I see of hardware in the press release and on the several sites dedicated to Sun Spot. I really hope they expand on this and show the world everything that is included in the OSS releases.
If the hardware is Open Source that could make way for some third parties to make their own implementations, similar to the different implementaitons of Arduino. This would be especially welcome given the crazy high cost of a Sun Spot device ($250 or so per device compared with $20-150 depending on configuration for Arduino). Yea, Yea, I know Sun Spot is way awesomer than Arduino, but if I am going to make a little device to attach to the top of a rocket or the under carriage of my skateboard, you better believe I am going to be looking for the cheapest hardware I can find.