VANCOUVER, British Columbia – September 5, 2007 – ActiveState Software Inc., a leading provider of professional development tools, announced the creation of the Open Komodo Project, a new initiative to create an open source platform that promotes open standards. The Open Komodo Project will fill a need for developer tools in the open web technology stack, furthering web innovation and freedom of choice for developers and end-users.
With the creation of the Open Komodo Project, ActiveState is joining advocates like Mozilla in promoting the open web. The open web philosophy aims to maintain the integrity of the web as a public space that is platform, language, and browser neutral. Open web standards advocate user freedom and choice, encourage decentralization and community, and ensure the viability of non-proprietary web technologies.
Open Komodo aims to create a framework for client-side web development integrated with Firefox®, Mozilla's free, open source web browser, and based on the award-winning Komodo® IDE, a multi-platform, multi-language IDE for dynamic languages and Ajax technologies. As a first step in the Open Komodo project, ActiveState is open sourcing the browser-side capabilities of Komodo® Edit, a free multi-language editor for dynamic languages based on Komodo® IDE.
"ActiveState has long lived by a philosophy of developer choice. We focus on dynamic languages, but give developers the freedom to choose what tools they use in their development process," said Shane Caraveo, Komodo Lead at ActiveState. "The open web philosophy is an extension of our involvement in the open source community as supporters and contributors. As strong advocates for the open web initiative, it's essential for us to enable developers to contribute to the open web."
"The Open Komodo project is an exciting alternative for web developers seeking an open source development environment," said Mike Shaver, Chief Evangelist at Mozilla. "At Mozilla, we believe that open standards encourage innovation and help ensure the continued health of the Internet. We're pleased that ActiveState is supporting the open web."
The initial open source code for Open Komodo will be a portion of ActiveState's Komodo Edit, which will form the base for the full-featured web development tool built in collaboration with the open source community. Open Komodo will use the Mozilla code base and feature a Scintilla-based editor for HTML, CSS, XML, and JavaScript. The planned feature set includes JavaScript debugging, autocomplete, syntax coloring, and syntax checking capabilities, as well as Firebug integration and an HTTP Inspector with the goal of providing seamless debugging and editing between Open Komodo and Firefox.
The Open Komodo development environment will be entirely open source and licensed under the same terms as Firefox: Mozilla Public License (MPL), GNU General Public License (GPL), and GNU Lesser Public License (LGPL).
The Open Komodo website will host Open Komodo mailing lists and blog feeds from ActiveState, and as the project develops, feature news alerts, the development roadmap, and the developer preview. To join the mailing list and read more about the Open Komodo project, visit www.activestate.com/openkomodo.
About ActiveState
ActiveState creates professional development tools, language distributions, and business solutions for dynamic languages. We focus on building JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Tcl technologies that just work. Our team of core language developers produce industry-recognized, award-winning tools for developing professional dynamic language applications. Our open source language distributions are renowned for their quality and are relied upon by millions of developers worldwide. ActiveState's business solutions offer guaranteed stability, expert support, unparalleled quality, and cost-efficiency to organizations that rely on open source dynamic languages. ActiveState is owned by its employees and Pender Financial Group, a publicly traded investment company focused on technology in British Columbia. For more information, visit www.activestate.com.
About Komodo IDE and Komodo Edit
Komodo IDE is a powerful, multi-platform, multi-language IDE for end-to-end development of dynamic web applications. Komodo IDE makes creating robust web apps fast and easy, with a rich feature set for client-side Ajax technologies such as CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and XML, coupled with advanced support for dynamic languages such as Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Tcl. Komodo IDE licenses are $295 US and a single license covers users across Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Learn more at www.activestate.com/komodo-ide.
Based on the award-winning Komodo IDE, Komodo Edit is a free, feature-rich editor for the full range of Komodo-supported dynamic languages and platforms. Learn more at www.activestate.com/komodo-edit.
For more about the Open Komodo project, visit www.activestate.com/openkomodo.
© 2007 ActiveState Software Inc.
All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
