Jython is an implementation of the Python programming language designed to run on the Java platform. The implementation was formerly known as JPython until 1999. Jython is an implementation of the Python programming language designed to run on the Java platform. The implementation was formerly known as JPython until 1999. Jython programs can import and use any Java class. Except for some standard modules, Jython programs use Java classes instead of Python modules. Jython includes almost all of the modules in the standard Python programming language distribution, lacking only some of the modules implemented originally in C. For example, a user interface in Jython could be written with Swing, AWT or SWT. Jython compiles to Java bytecode (intermediate language) either on demand or statically. Jython was initially created in late 1997 to replace C with Java for performance-intensive code accessed by Python programs, moving to SourceForge in October 2000. The Python Software Foundation awarded a grant in January 2005. Jython 2.5 was released in June 2009. The most recent release is Jython 2.7.1. It was released on 1 July 2017 and is compatible with Python 2.7. Although Jython implements the Python language specification, it has some differences and incompatibilities with CPython, which is the reference implementation of Python. From version 2.2 on, Jython (including the standard library) is released under the Python Software Foundation License (v2). Older versions are covered by the Jython 2.0, 2.1 license and the JPython 1.1.x Software License.