The Java language grew out of a project to run on small devices. It gained popularity with the rise of web browsers and applets, but with automatic memory management, a virtual machine, a large set of bundled libraries, and some degree of "Write Once, Run Anywhere," it's grown into a general-purpose programming language. Though Sun Microsystems has released the source code as free software, the company still retains some degree of control over the evolution of the language and libraries though the Java Community Process.