The Java language is an object-oriented programming language created by James Gosling and other engineers at Sun Microsystems. It was developed in 1991, as part of the Green Project, and officially announced on May 23, 1995, at SunWorld; being released in November. Gosling and friends initially designed Java, which was called Oak at first (in honour of a tree outside Gosling's office), to replace C++ (although the feature set better resembles that of Objective C). Sun controls the Java specification and holds a trademark on the Java name.