On the other hand, foes deride Open Source as a value-destroying cancer that threatens the very survival of proprietary software companies and intellectual property rights. Making matters worse, the growing active participation of major hardware vendors in Open Source is being used as ammunition by both Open Source supporters and enemies alike. On one hand, the participation of these hardware vendors affirms the movement’s legitimacy. On the other hand, for others this only serves to raise troubling questions. Finally, the misguided assumption that Open Source equals Linux has confused potential converts even more.

Yet, for all of the rhetorical hand grenades, no one seems to be addressing the one question that could put an effective end to the Open Source debate: How has the Open Source software model fared thus far in the commercial marketplace? Is it resulting in better code, happier users, more productive and collaborative development and faster bug fixes? Are companies involved successfully selling and seeing profits from commercially viable Open Source-based products?

There is an answer, and that answer is NetBeans. Consider its progress as an Open Source project: By providing an IDE with open APIs as a foundation for add-on modules and products, Sun has created a commercially viable Open Source model.

Today’s NetBeans platform began in 1996 in the Czech Republic as a student project. The idea was to build an integrated development environment (IDE) using the Java programming language. After releasing several commercial versions of the product, NetBeans was acquired by Sun Microsystems in October 1999. In June 2000, Sun made the strategic decision to open NetBeans source code.

How does one measure NetBeans’ success? Two sure indicators are membership and web site traffic. Since the release of the NetBeans source code, netbeans.org has grown to be an active Open Source community attracting members from 77 countries worldwide. The NetBeans site receives over 435,000 hits and 5,000 downloads per week. Even more telling, netbeans.org now welcomes more than 12,000 unique visitors per week.

Still, the true test is not what people take from Open Source, but what they contribute to it. Here again, NetBeans has achieved significant results. There are over 7,000 files in the NetBeans Open Source project, comprising about 1.4 million lines of code. During the year and a half since netbeans.org was established, 17 new modules have been developed and accepted into the NetBeans code base.

Now for the hard part of the test. What impact has NetBeans had on commercial software development? To find the answer, consider the number of companies that are building commercial products based on NetBeans. More than 100 companies are building innovative plug-in modules that extend tools that were built with NetBeans technology; and 30 of these are already shipping after only a year. And many companies are creating new NetBeans-based products totally independent of Sun, including Compuware’s OptimalJ, BEA’s WebLogic Portal, Xemus’ Project XEMO, and Compaq’s Compaq NetBeans for OpenVMS.

As the fifth largest independent software vendor in the world, Compuware is just the kind of company that critics of Open Source would claim could see harm by adopting Open Source software. Nonetheless, its OptimalJ advanced development environment includes the NetBeans platform as its default IDE. Edwin Schumacher, the director of product management at Compuware, sees strong value in Open Source components: “Our OptimalJ team chose to work with NetBeans because NetBeans is developed, maintained and owned by the developer community,” says Schumacher. “We knew it would result in the highest quality product.”

BEA is another company that benefits from the NetBeans platform. This San Jose-based company provides application infrastructure software. Recently, they launched BEA WebLogic Portal 4.0, which was built leveraging public NetBeans tools. This e-business software platform includes a portal framework with portal foundation services, personalization and interaction management, intelligent administration and integration services. “The NetBeans application framework allows our developers to concentrate on business logic,” says Shane Pearson, senior manager, product management, BEA Enterprise Framework Division. “That’s where any software vendor wants to invest its resources.

Companies are also using NetBeans as a foundation for building non-IDE applications. Project XEMO from Xemus Software LLC is a good example. Project XEMO is an Open Source, modular software environment for the development and delivery of interactive music, audio, and sound applications. XEMO ICE, which stands for Integrated Composition Environment, is a desktop delivery platform for the integration of application modules into an interactive musical application. “Using NetBeans as the platform for our application saved us several developer-years of time,” says Kevin Saltzman, CTO, Xemus. “We use NetBeans as the basis for our music composition tools, and we get to benefit from further innovations in NetBeans as it evolves.”

Sun, meanwhile, continues to be an active member of the NetBeans community and has contributed several additional modules to the project. Sun offers two commercial versions of the Forte for Java IDE, both built on NetBeans code. Forte for Java, Community Edition, is available for download at no charge and Sun markets and sells Forte for Java, Enterprise Edition, which incorporates NetBeans code plus additional modules.

To date, developers have downloaded more than 1.8 million copies of the Forte for Java IDE. What’s more, ISVs are shipping innovative standalone products or plug-in modules that extend the Forte for Java environment, carrying a wide range of functionality, from web services development tools to wireless device emulators and beyond.

Take Software AG, which is Europe’s largest system software provider. Under a joint marketing agreement with Sun, Software AG is offering its Tamino XML Server to the Forte for Java IDE developer community as a quick and easy way to XML-enable enterprise solutions. Tamino XML Server provides optimized storage, maintenance, publishing, and exchange of XML documents. “We see the Forte for Java IDE platform becoming the console through which developers and end users can utilize independent software vendors’ modules for building enterprise solutions,” says Schalk Viljoen, a Software AG vice president.

NetBeans carries some significant industry lessons to be learned. Compuware, BEA, and Software AG show that Open Source is not incompatible with commercial software business models. The NetBeans community has also demonstrated how shared code has meant shared benefit and not reduced innovation.