Now that the platform has proven itself we need to help them [developers] by providing tools to help them develop new projects, said Todd Barr, director of product marketing for applications at the Raleigh, North Carolina-based Linux distributor.
Red Hat already offers its Developer Suite, which is based on the Eclipse integrated development environment and tool set, and that is set to be updated this year with tools and plug-ins to make it easier to manage, according to Barr, while Red Hat will also be working with customers and the community on a number of new tools.
These include the Frysk systems monitor and SystemTap systems profiling tools, as well as Subversion for version control, and Autobuild.org for automated build and bug testing. While the company is not planning to commercialize any of the projects at this stage, Barr said, you’ll see us take a position on this end-to-end open source tooling.
There will also be a new developer portal aimed at commercial application developers and in-house developers, while the company is also considering whether it could expose its internal test framework as an open source project, according to Barr.
While the thinking around that idea is in the very early stages, Red Hat is about to go to the next stage with the delivery of its certified open source stacks, which will also be of interest to internal developers and ISVs.
The company announced in December 2005 that it would launch three certified stacks for web applications, and the LAMP stack including support for the Apache HTTP Server, MySQL AB’s database and PHP or Perl, as well as the PostgreSQL database is due in beta within days according to Barr.
That will be followed by the Java Web Application Stack, which builds on top of those offerings with components for more dynamic web applications, such as the Apache Tomcat Servlet and JSP container, Apache Struts, Apache Axis, Spring, Hibernate, Lucerne, Ant, Junit, Jython, Log4J, and XML libraries.
The top of the range Enterprise Java Stack, meanwhile will include all of the above, as well as support for Red Hat Application Server, which is a full Java application server based on ObjectWeb’s JOnAS project.
The stacks can be seen as a response to the emerging market for open source software support and services providers, typified by the likes of SpikeSource Inc and SourceLabs Inc. I think they’ve identified a real customer need, commented Barr.
He added that the company had not finalized details of how often it hoped to update the certified stack but by analyzing the past and future roadmaps for the components it had identified points of convergence that would make releases every six-to-nine months likely.
While the company is eager to build up its involvement with developers through the tools updates it appears the company is not looking to challenge the likes of IBM Corp with its Rational portfolio, at least not yet.
As the open source tools develop, if company’s are working with something that’s open source and competes with Rational, maybe we’d go with that, but we’re not going out with the in the intention to compete with Rational, Barr explained.
Over time you will see this robust development environment built out of open source tools, added Brian Stevens, Red Hat vice president of engineering and CTO. We’re not competing in terms of providing a subscription offering, but we will work with partners to enable that.
