Sun Microsystems on Wednesday held the Java Mobile & Embedded Developer Days conference at its Santa Clara, Calif. offices, where it announced plans to release some mobile Java code as open source and clarified the status of Java ME.

Java ME (Micro Edition), primarily used in cell phones, will go into even smaller devices, like embedded controllers, while Java SE (Standard Edition) will go into cell phones with the memory and capacity. JavaFX, the big update to Java client technology, may also find its way into very high-end handsets.

Sun also announced it will release the Squawk virtual machine, a Java ME-compliant virtual machine used in the Sun SPOT platform, as an open source project under the GPL license. Sun hopes that developers will port the Squawk code to other mobile and embedded devices besides mobile phones.

It also said the JXTA Java ME MIDP2.0 Proxyless Implementation will be released as open source. JXTA is used to create networks for devices, like cell phones, and allows for discovery of other devices.

Also, Sun and Vodafone announced plans to collaborate on Betavine, an open community and resource Website created and managed by Vodafone. The two companies will collaborate on mobile applications. Among the first projects will be the WebAPISample MIDlet suite, which can receive Short Message Service (SMS) messages from a Web API.

A full stream of the event can be found on Ustream.