Sun Microsystems, Inc. has acquired Czech open source software company NetBeans, a developer of integrated development environments for Java programming language.
NetBeans’ flagship product, NetBeans Developer, is offered for the Solaris, Linux and Windows 98/NT platforms. The Linux community in particular recognizes the Developer as the indisputable leader in its category.
NetBeans is known among
developers not only for its product but for its open source business policy as well — all the products are freely available for download via the Internet. Important parts of the source code are also published under the terms of GPL (General Public License).
Sun Microsystems is expected to maintain the rule that no NetBeans customer should forced to pay anything until the first commercial use of the product. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.
NetBeans Developer is a full-featured IDE development tool that
combines support for all stages of application development, including
visual GUI design, editing, compilation, and debugging.
“We want to
offer equivalent of Swiss army knife for the Java programmer,” said Roman Stanek, founder and CEO of NetBeans.
NetBeans will join Sun’s Software Products and
Platforms division, reporting to Jonathan Schwartz, vice president and
general manager, Internet application and performance tools.
“With more than 100,000 downloads, NetBeans is well positioned to be the
leading Java technology IDE on the market,” said Stanek. “Being
acquired by Sun now gives us the industry visability and additional
resources required to make the NetBeans Developer IDE the portal of
choice for software developers.”
Stanek, who previously worked for Informix, Powersoft and Sybase,
is one of the most experienced IT managers in the Czech Republic. He
founded NetBeans in 1997. There are several famous names among investors
into the company, including industrial pundit Esther Dyson.
