By Amy Newman, Web Developer News
Sun Microsystems Inc. this week
unveiled its plans to release the source code to Forte for Java,
Community Edition 1.0, its cross-platform integrated development
environment (IDE) for Java technology.
Sun said the decision illustrates the company’s commitment to
open source technologies and marks the first step in a major new
Sun initiative to make Java tools and components available more
broadly to drive innovation.
Forte for Java, Community Edition will form the foundation of
Sun’s new Java technology-based open tools framework. This
framework will support the entire development life cycle, improve
reliability through reuse, eliminate vendor lock-in, and
dramatically cut costs and time to market.
Forte for Java, Community Edition 1.0 will be made available
under the Mozilla public licensing model.
The Forte for Java, Community Edition 1.0 binary product is
Sun’s attempt to provide an integrated, extensible, cross-platform
development environment for the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition.
It seeks to deliver integrated visual design, editing, compilation
and debugging capabilities for development within the Solaris
operating environment, Linux and Microsoft Windows platforms.
Forte for Java, Community Edition claims more than 200,000
downloads to date. The product is can be downloaded for free from Sun
Microsystems’ site.
The binary code for the product is slated for release by the end
of March. The source code is scheduled for availability within the
next 90 days.