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Borland Releases JBuilder to Eclipse
ricochet81 writes "The Register is reporting that Borland has released the base version of JBuilder as open source on Eclipse! Is this just the next company to use open source as part of a marketing tool, akin to Sun, IBM and Oracle's opensource IDE push? Is the future of enterprise IDE open?"
I've used JBuilder since version 1.0 and i've recently started using Eclipse. The main difference between the two is the learning curve. It's really easy to create a web/j2ee/swing application in JBuilder, while it is a lot less easy to get going with Eclipse. Plain Eclipse is not really suited for real development: you need several other plugins (such as myeclipseide.com) for it to be useful.
The main reason for Borland to shift the focus to Eclipse is that it takes a *lot* of work to develop/maintain the basic functionality of an IDE. Look at CVS integration for example. It comes "free" with Eclipse, and is way better than what JBuilder offers. Eclipse offers a free base platform on which Borland can create & market proprietary plugins for enterprise development (this is what IBM does and what Oracle is moving to). It'll be interesting to see how commercial plugins will compete with OSS ones.
most components of their programs can be released in a free/open-source format (especially the file format) and then you can sell a more complex version with the real things
:)
I think you're right. But something frightens me about companies using open source as a loss leader. It makes me think they're missing the point.
But, who's to complain. If its something or nothing, I'll take something.
Look at CVS integration for example. It comes "free" with Eclipse, and is way better than what JBuilder offers.
i've personally tried a round of window cvs software include WinCvs and TurtoiseCVS and I've gotta say both were incomparable to Eclipse. I don't know why there hasn't been a easier CVS software, or maybe it's because I'm not looking hard enough. That said, even if I'm building software on Visual Studio or another IDE, I would still use Eclipse to refresh the directory and synchronize with the repository.
If anyone knows of any better free CVS software out there, I'm all ears!
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Togethersoft was (and still is) an amazing tool for roud-trip UML modelling in Java - you update the model, the code updates. You update the code, and the model updates. Never out of synch, and a pleasure to use. JBuilder soaked up TogetherSoft, and if it makes it into Eclipse, that would really fill the gap of good UML support in Eclipse.