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Sun Opens Modeling Tools
twofish writes "According to the Register, Sun is set to open source a few modeling tools, including their UML modeler, XML infrastructure and visual editing tools, and BPEL tools. The software, part of the planned Java Studio Enterprise 9.0, will made available for download as part of Sun's NetBeans Enterprise Pack." From the article: "By open sourcing its UML tools Sun is continuing its push against the rival Eclipse open source tools framework. The Eclipse Foundation has pushed UML and model-driven architectures for some time via the Eclipse Tools Project. The project encompasses an open source implementation of UML, called UML2, and a modeling framework and code-generation facility to build tools and applications that use a structured data model - called the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF)."
Well I've used UML on every large project I've worked on since about 1999 and its been absolutely invaluable. Obviously its not the only way of communicating design but it is
a) Understood by most systems designers
b) Under by pretty much every developer I work with
c) Specific enough to be able to communicate fairly complex designs with, generic enough that it lends itself well to things (like distributed asynchronous messaging based systems) that it wasn't designed for.
Beats the hell out of re-inventing the wheel...
As an aside twofish - nice tunes...
I am quite surprised that sun is spending so much money on software while its core copetency is in hardware. they paid tons for Forte, Netbeans, Seebeyond, Staroffice and has a huge software group. Other than Java and Solaris-10, not many people pay for any of the Sun software. Oracle, IBM, Microsoft have huge enterprise customer base from where they get majority of the revenue and use this to provide free developer tools and other free goodies, but what does Sun have? I guess, a way for Sun to achieve profitability would be to get rid off all software teams except Solaris, Java and focus on their hardware business. They should at AMD for some guidance. It stuck to its core business and today it is Intel whose stock price is very low while AMD is close to historically high.
Eclipse may have a lot of momentum, but I still think Netbeans is a better tool. I haven't really used either extensively, but from what I've seen, I like Netbeans a lot more. There's room for more than 1 IDE in the world, just like there's room for Gnome and KDE. Remember, MS Office has a lot of momentum too, but that doens't mean Sun should abandon star/open office.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The advances in the Java IDE space over the last four years have been fantastic. Whether you are a fan of Netbeans, Eclipse, another IDE, or even if you don't use Java, this competition should be a nice reminder of how a working market produces innovative products at a nice pace. (AMD vs. Intel is another example.)
... only one manufacturer for OS-X.
It is a sad reminder of Microsoft's (criminal) monopoly, and the governments unwillingness to intervene, that for the vast majority of consumers, there has been very little of this "competitive energy" in the Operating System space. Sure, they can buy an Apple, but even there
I'm running a nice 3-d enhanced desktop (Xgl) in Linux, but I see Windows users have another six months, minimum, to see anything comperable.
Imagine what the tech world would be like if the Operating System market was as competitive as NetBeans vs. Eclipse.
I believe the GP meant "release the source" as in set it free. That's different from making it available to look at but not touch and not redistribute. Mustang is certainly not free (as in free) or open source.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.