Apache NetBeans?

It's fairly common to have significant announcements related to the world of Java released in the days and weeks leading up to JavaOne. With that in mind, it's not surprising that we're seeing some significant Java-related announcements just prior to JavaOne 2016 that begins next week. One announcement is Mark Reinhold's Proposed schedule change for JDK 9 in which Reinhold proposes "a four-month extension of the JDK 9 schedule, moving the General Availability (GA) milestone to July 2017." Another major proposal, the subject of this post, is the proposal by Oracle for Oracle to "contribut[e] the NetBeans IDE as a new open-source project within the Apache Incubator."

The Apache NetBeans proposal is summarized on NetBeans.org, but additional details are available on Apache Software Foundation's Incubator Wiki page called NetBeansProposal. The NetBeansProposal Wiki page provides several details related to the benefits, costs, and risks associated with moving NetBeans to the Apache Software Foundation. Additional views on this proposal that summarize or interpret the proposal can be found in online resources such as Proposal has NetBeans moving to Apache Incubator, Oracle's NetBeans Headed to The Apache Software Foundation, Oracle no more - NetBeans is moving to Apache, Java founder James Gosling endorses Apache takeover of NetBeans Java IDE, An unexpected proposal: Oracle bids farewell to NetBeans, and Oracle Proposes NetBeans IDE as Apache Incubator Project. There are also two Reddit threads on this subject on the subreddits programming and java.

I've felt for some time that the open source projects I'm most willing to "take a chance on" and recommend to management and customers are those that have either strong corporate sponsorship or are affiliated with an established and successful umbrella organization such as Apache Software Foundation. Therefore, although I don't like to see NetBeans lose the corporate backing and investment of Oracle, the Apache Software Foundation does provide a home for NetBeans to continue being a successful project.

Like many software developers who have been working in this area for years, I've been using Apache Software Foundation projects for most of those years. The liberal Apache 2 license is welcoming and uncomplicated. The projects tend to be well run and well used. On occasion when projects are no longer active, the ASF is fairly timely in moving such projects to the Apache Attic. Projects associated with ASF tend to enjoy benefits often associated with open source such as multiple contributors including multiple reviewers and real-life "testers." Many of the ASF projects enjoy a large community with the accompanying benefits of a large community such as improved main site documentation as well as third-party supplemental documentation with blogs, books, and articles. Of course, NetBeans already enjoys much of this, so moving to ASF might be more of an approach to retain some of the advantages it already enjoys while at the same time potentially encouraging greater community collaboration.

The Apache Software Foundation projects I've used over the years seem to come from two different types of origins. Some of them have been associated with ASF from their beginning or almost their beginning while others were popular projects already when they were moved to the ASF. NetBeans falls in the latter category with other projects that I used before they went to ASF such as Groovy (from SpringSource/Pivotal) and Flex (from Adobe). It seems likely that Oracle has proposed donating NetBeans to Apache Software Foundation for the same reasons that Pivotal and Adobe donated Groovy and Flex respectively to Apache Software Foundation.

The examples just mentioned (Adobe|Flex, Pivotal|Groovy, and Oracle|NetBeans) are just a subset of examples that could be cited in which corporations who are the sponsors and dominant contributors have given away the open source project, typically with the intent to spend fewer resources managing that project. If NetBeans is able to enjoy significant community contributions, the disadvantages of reduced corporate sponsorship might be at least partially offset. Some of this, of course, depends on what level of involvement Oracle supports its employees in contributing to NetBeans.

When Oracle acquired Sun, many of us wondered about the future of GlassFish (Oracle had already acquired WebLogic from BEA) and NetBeans (Oracle already had a free, but not open source, Java IDE in JDeveloper). Oracle announced in 2013 that GlassFish 4.x would not be available as a commercial offering and would only continue as an unsupported Java EE reference implementation (though third-party support can be found for the "drop-in replacement" Payara Server). Although there are some advantages to this "developer-friendly" reference implementation in terms of trying new Java EE features and learning Java EE concepts, most Java EE developers I'm aware of who use an open source Java EE application server for production have moved to WildFly. Given this, I've been happy to see NetBeans moving along and being supported as well as it has for as many years as it has.

One potentially new prospect for NetBeans is being the basis for more specialized IDEs. Eclipse has long been the basis of specialized IDEs and development tool suites such as Spring Tool Suite (Spring IDE), Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse, Adobe Flash Builder, Red Hat JBoss Developer Studio, and Zend Studio. Similarly, Android Studio is built on IntelliJ IDEA. Although there are already tools based on NetBeans (such as VisualVM), NetBeans's independence from Oracle may seem more attractive to some for future tools' development.

At the time of this writing, the NetBeansProposal Wiki page already lists 63 people in "the initial list of individual contributors" (including 26 people contributors associated with Oracle). That, along with the extensive resources already available related to NetBeans, encourage me and make me think that NetBeans could be a successful and thriving Apache Software Foundation project. I certainly prefer NetBeans's chances as an Apache Software Foundation project over its chances if it existed in a state similar to that placed upon GlassFish.

We Java developers are fortunate to have multiple very strong IDEs available for our use. It's in our best interest if they can each remain strong and viable as all the IDEs (and the developers who use them) benefit from the competition and from the innovation that talented developers working on these IDEs bring to our development experience. Each of the IDEs offers different advantages and has different strengths and I'm hoping that we can benefit from NetBeans's current strengths and future strengths for years to come.