Rich web platform donated to Dojo Foundation
You know that thing where Silicon Valley pumps out news right at the end of our day here in Europe so we miss it or catch a vague hint of it sometime later if we go looking specifically?
Well, keen to show visible proximity to the Dojo Foundation’s open web toolkits and code contributions, Tibco (or as they would prefer TIBCO) last night “donated” its General Interface source code in a ‘philanthropic’ show of affection towards open source developers that want to build Ajax-based RIAs.
As a platform, Tibco says its product is used by some of the Global 2000 companies for what it calls “mission critical web applications”. Whether or not that is a term being used to apply some greater worth to corporate web sites and therefore the significance of their own technology I am not sure.
The company says the donation is designed to encourage developers to create Ajax apps, components and portlets with the look and feel of a desktop GUI. Dylan Schiemann, vice president at the Dojo Foundation and CEO at SitePen went on the record to say that, “Numerous integration opportunities exist between General Interface, the Dojo Toolkit and other foundation projects and we are currently working on tighter integration between the Dojo Toolkit and General Interface for our next formal release.”
In a mutual show of developer love, Tibco confirmed that, “The open source code we are providing to Dojo developers is line-for-line, the exact enterprise-grade GI code currently deployed by many Fortune 500 companies around the world.”
… and the upshot of all this is? Well, the Dojo Foundation has received code contributions from over 500 individuals and 50 corporations worldwide, so they’re not short of a code listing or two.
Without disrespecting the donation, Tibco is clearly a big company with a cleverly monetised market strategy, so they don’t make donations of any kind without thinking about it first.
With so many players out there trying to align their platforms into the RIA space as we arguably sit on the brink on real RIA usage for ‘productivity applications’, now is clearly the time to be seen to be “giving” and open to all is it not?