Sun Microsystems has joined the Dojo Foundation, a group developing an open source development kit for creating Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) applications. 

Sun is the third major IT vendor to back the developer suite following AOL and IBM.

The vendor's support ensures that the DoJo tool will be agnostic about the server side architecture rather than tied to the products of one particular vendor, argued Alex Russell, the project's lead developer.

"Sun's announcement is the next big thing for us. It means that it is not just an AOL/IBM toolkit," Russell told vnunet.com.

"We are really happy about that. With only one or two vendors behind it, it was unclear that it wouldn't be tied to one person's idea of what the server side should look like."

Sun will allow DoJo to become an enterprise grade developer tool by helping developers to create internationalised applications and meet accessibility standards, according to Russell.

The company will also contribute several components to make the tool more suited to enterprise needs.

"These are the kind of basic development issues that everyone has. Some of them would not get solved on the open source side alone, because frankly they are not interesting to someone who is just volunteering their time," said Russell.

He added that it will probably take another two versions before DoJo is ready for mainstream enterprise use, although several corporations are using it today.

EBay, for instance, used the tool to create the user interface for what it claims is the world's largest commercial Wiki.