8 ms·

Apache NetBeans Proposal

144 points by aikah 10y ago

ysleepy 10y ago
I think Oracle is disappointed how their ownership of Java is not as powerful as hoped though costing them a lot. The tooling and enterprise workflow probably eats a lot of manpower. Netbeans was always great for the more advanced Java platform features since it was "officially" supported and often the demo implementation for them. I hope Oracle will continue invest in it because it is a polished platform. The profiling and sampling tools shared with visualvm are awesome. Or maybe Oracle is just loosening the governance grip on the platform allowing some control for other organisations invested in the platform. Time will tell.
gliesian 10y ago
I like NetBeans http://robertjliguori.blogspot.com/2016/09/apache-netbeans-where-only-good-gets.html http://robertjliguori.blogspot.com/2016/09/apache-netbeans-w...
gliesian 10y ago
I like NetBeans and I like Apache http://robertjliguori.blogspot.com/2016/09/apache-netbeans-where-only-good-gets.html http://robertjliguori.blogspot.com/2016/09/apache-netbeans-w...
thrillgore 10y ago
This worked out well for OpenOffice.org, Cassandra, Wave, Groovy...
ognyankulev 10y ago
The license will be changed to Apache License and this is great. What I'm wondering is if they will succeed in keeping it very focused monolith as it is now, or some "design by commitee" will make it buggy monstrosity like Eclipse.
- jcbeard 10y ago
  Exactly. I no longer use an IDE unless I have to (mostly a vim person), but if I were to choose one I'd take Netbeans. It's always been the most "put together". Easy to install, very focused, and the layout just makes sense. Despite my preference of non-JVM for execution (mainly b/c I go for performance vs. ease of coding), I like that Netbeans basically can run with almost identical look and feel on almost any platform with a functional JVM. I was always impressed that they were able to get the GUI to feel the same cross-platform, which even on Java isn't always easy to do. I hope Netbeans is able to keep its mojo intact. I was worried about the Oracle custodians...and now we might have to worry about a committee which could be just as dangerous.
  - sdegutis 10y ago
    Have you ever used IntelliJ IDEA? It seems to meet all your requirements: it looks and feels identical on all platforms with a JVM, it's very focused and "put together", and the layout just makes sense. In fact I only mention this after spending the last month trying out all three (Eclipse, NetBeans, IDEA) and settling on IDEA for these reasons and a few more (especially how it indexes the whole universe and gives you smart autocompletion in every place imaginable). And the Community Edition is free, if price is a concern.
    - batbomb 10y ago
      I regularly use PyCharm and CLion, but I still prefer Netbeans over Eclipse and IDEA any day of the week for Java development. A big part of that is that the maven integration is nicer, and I get along well with the debugging and profiling.
      - reitanqild 10y ago
        Same here: I can get an IntelliJ license any day I want. I mostly like Jetbrains, I just prefer Netbeans for the UX and Maven integration.
    - ognyankulev 10y ago
satysin 10y ago
I have always felt NetBeans lagged behind Eclipse (and Idea) under Sun and even more so under Oracle. I think transferring to Apache would be a good thing overall for the NetBeans project.
- rjsw 10y ago
  Netbeans runs on anything with a JVM, Eclipse is a lot harder to port to different systems.
- aikah 10y ago
  I personally enjoy NetBeans more than Eclipse or any other Java IDE. There is something about Eclipse interface I just hate. But it always felt "less pluggable" and harder to customize than other prominent IDE. But it looks like it will definitely loose momentum without any real corporate support. All in all, languages "shouldn't have IDE". They should provide services as separate apps that should be pluggable and used in any editor. That's something Go did well as it provides a code completion server and code quality tools and any dev can make a plugin out of them for any editor. It makes things easier to develop and maintain for service developers, plugin developers and IDE developers. I would love to be able to use Netbeans features without using Netbean itself, without being tied to the IDE.
  - sjellis 10y ago
    There's actually now a common specification for language services (pioneered by Microsoft for Visual Studio Code), and Red Hat are implementing it for Eclipse: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-codenvy-and-microsoft-collaborate-language-server-protocol https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-coden... I don't whether anyone is working on this for Netbeans, though.
    - TylerJewell 10y ago
      Codenvy has added it into Che - shipping in a few weeks. Red Hat is adding it into Eclipse. And IBM is adding it into Orion. There is collaboration from Microsoft, Mulesoft, Salesforce, Zend, IBM, Red Hat and Typefox around the language services and proposal. The big piece that is missing is a language server registry so that any tool can discover, install and register locally a language service. That will come next.
chris_wot 10y ago
Oracle transfers their software to the Apache Foundation: what could possibly go wrong?
- bonoboTP 10y ago
  What are you referring to?
  - akuchling 10y ago
    Surely to Apache OpenOffice, which hasn't yet built a strong development community under the ASF's umbrella.
    - peterkelly 10y ago
      "Yet". I'm sure it will... just give it more time
      - chris_wot 10y ago
        I think that highly unlikely. Hey can't fix their build process, how do they expect to get new contributors?
      - davidgerard 10y ago
        How much are you thinking? That is, at what point is your claim testable?
    - theandrewbailey 10y ago
      The thing with OpenOffice is that (mostly) everyone abandoned it for a better governed fork long before it got handed to the ASF.
  - nbevans 10y ago
    Presumably that Oracle will sue them for patent infringement several years down the line when the claimed damages is far higher.
dboreham 10y ago
Time to buy some JetBrains stock..
- reitanqild 10y ago
  Why? If anything Netbeans should be more attractive if it is released from Oracle.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > If anything Netbeans should be more attractive if it is released from Oracle. Until the community around it solidifies and proves that it is committed and capable, it will probably be less attractive than when it was backed by Oracle.
dr_faustus 10y ago
Is it me or has Apache increasingly become the place open source projects of big companies go to die? OpenOffice, Geronimo, Harmony, Wave, etc.pp. I really think that Apache should stop incubating projects which were essentially discarded by their corporate owners. Successful OSS projects are either community projects from day one (HTTPd etc) or require (at least initially) strong interest and involvement of the company that donates the code. How can you expect a community to magically develop around an abandoned project?
- orionblastar 10y ago
  Actually I think this is the way that FOSS projects are designed. If one group can't maintain it, another can take it over. Netbeans was fine for a while and then better tools came out. I used Frontpage and Visual Interdev in the mid to late 1990s, discovered Netbeans later on. I remember downloading Netbeans with the Java SDK.
- johnhenry 10y ago
  Arguably, it's not where open-source projects go to die, but rather, where we send projects that should die, but we're just not ready to let them go.
- sspiff 10y ago
  I was thinking the same thing. Many big open source projects are "entrusted" to Apache after their funding/support is cut off. Why is Apache taking these up / wasting time on them? So far all of them have died shortly after, with no significant improvements landing once Apache has taken over.
  - ricksplat 10y ago
    > Why is Apache taking these up / wasting time on them? Presumably they get some funding in return. It makes $$$ sense for those entrusting if they have an established user base they no longer want to support.
    - jimjag 10y ago
marpstar 10y ago
NetBeans was the first IDE we used in college (circa 2006). It's ridiculously easy to get setup, as opposed to Eclipse which I've always disliked.
- jitix 10y ago
  Me too. I think eclipse is too complicated for a college student who's just upgrading from text editors or BlueJ. Netbeans is still my go-to IDE for prototyping stuff or writing simple stuff that dont need me handling multiple branches at once. The only reason its not my main IDE is the lack of workspaces and/or multiple instances (I did make it work once but its too tedious to set up again). One of my favorite analogies is that Netbeans is the iOS of the IDEs and Eclipse is the Android. Eclipse supports way fore features than Netbeans but Netbeans "just works".
nickserv 10y ago
Good news overall, at least with Apache the project stands a chance of continuing. Oracle has shown to be a poor manager of open-source projects. Maybe we can even get a proper Python plugin out of this ;-)
heisenbit 10y ago
The license changing to Apache is probably a good thing in the long run. The committer list in the proposal is roughly 1/3 Oracle. One can only hope they continue to be committed to it. It is certainly an ominous sign for the Java community in general that the designated steward is divesting tooling.

144 points by aikah 10y ago

I think Oracle is disappointed how their ownership of Java is not as powerful as hoped though costing them a lot. The tooling and enterprise workflow probably eats a lot of manpower. Netbeans was always great for the more advanced Java platform features since it was "officially" supported and often the demo implementation for them. I hope Oracle will continue invest in it because it is a polished platform. The profiling and sampling tools shared with visualvm are awesome. Or maybe Oracle is just loosening the governance grip on the platform allowing some control for other organisations invested in the platform. Time will tell.

gliesian 10y ago

I like NetBeans http://robertjliguori.blogspot.com/2016/09/apache-netbeans-where-only-good-gets.html http://robertjliguori.blogspot.com/2016/09/apache-netbeans-w...

gliesian 10y ago

I like NetBeans and I like Apache http://robertjliguori.blogspot.com/2016/09/apache-netbeans-where-only-good-gets.html http://robertjliguori.blogspot.com/2016/09/apache-netbeans-w...

thrillgore 10y ago

This worked out well for OpenOffice.org, Cassandra, Wave, Groovy...

ognyankulev 10y ago

The license will be changed to Apache License and this is great. What I'm wondering is if they will succeed in keeping it very focused monolith as it is now, or some "design by commitee" will make it buggy monstrosity like Eclipse.

jcbeard 10y ago
Exactly. I no longer use an IDE unless I have to (mostly a vim person), but if I were to choose one I'd take Netbeans. It's always been the most "put together". Easy to install, very focused, and the layout just makes sense. Despite my preference of non-JVM for execution (mainly b/c I go for performance vs. ease of coding), I like that Netbeans basically can run with almost identical look and feel on almost any platform with a functional JVM. I was always impressed that they were able to get the GUI to feel the same cross-platform, which even on Java isn't always easy to do. I hope Netbeans is able to keep its mojo intact. I was worried about the Oracle custodians...and now we might have to worry about a committee which could be just as dangerous.
- sdegutis 10y ago
  Have you ever used IntelliJ IDEA? It seems to meet all your requirements: it looks and feels identical on all platforms with a JVM, it's very focused and "put together", and the layout just makes sense. In fact I only mention this after spending the last month trying out all three (Eclipse, NetBeans, IDEA) and settling on IDEA for these reasons and a few more (especially how it indexes the whole universe and gives you smart autocompletion in every place imaginable). And the Community Edition is free, if price is a concern.
  - batbomb 10y ago
    I regularly use PyCharm and CLion, but I still prefer Netbeans over Eclipse and IDEA any day of the week for Java development. A big part of that is that the maven integration is nicer, and I get along well with the debugging and profiling.
    - reitanqild 10y ago
      Same here: I can get an IntelliJ license any day I want. I mostly like Jetbrains, I just prefer Netbeans for the UX and Maven integration.
  - ognyankulev 10y ago

satysin 10y ago

I have always felt NetBeans lagged behind Eclipse (and Idea) under Sun and even more so under Oracle. I think transferring to Apache would be a good thing overall for the NetBeans project.

rjsw 10y ago
Netbeans runs on anything with a JVM, Eclipse is a lot harder to port to different systems.
aikah 10y ago
I personally enjoy NetBeans more than Eclipse or any other Java IDE. There is something about Eclipse interface I just hate. But it always felt "less pluggable" and harder to customize than other prominent IDE. But it looks like it will definitely loose momentum without any real corporate support. All in all, languages "shouldn't have IDE". They should provide services as separate apps that should be pluggable and used in any editor. That's something Go did well as it provides a code completion server and code quality tools and any dev can make a plugin out of them for any editor. It makes things easier to develop and maintain for service developers, plugin developers and IDE developers. I would love to be able to use Netbeans features without using Netbean itself, without being tied to the IDE.
- sjellis 10y ago
  There's actually now a common specification for language services (pioneered by Microsoft for Visual Studio Code), and Red Hat are implementing it for Eclipse: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-codenvy-and-microsoft-collaborate-language-server-protocol https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-coden... I don't whether anyone is working on this for Netbeans, though.
  - TylerJewell 10y ago
    Codenvy has added it into Che - shipping in a few weeks. Red Hat is adding it into Eclipse. And IBM is adding it into Orion. There is collaboration from Microsoft, Mulesoft, Salesforce, Zend, IBM, Red Hat and Typefox around the language services and proposal. The big piece that is missing is a language server registry so that any tool can discover, install and register locally a language service. That will come next.

chris_wot 10y ago

Oracle transfers their software to the Apache Foundation: what could possibly go wrong?

bonoboTP 10y ago
What are you referring to?
- akuchling 10y ago
  Surely to Apache OpenOffice, which hasn't yet built a strong development community under the ASF's umbrella.
  - peterkelly 10y ago
    "Yet". I'm sure it will... just give it more time
    - chris_wot 10y ago
      I think that highly unlikely. Hey can't fix their build process, how do they expect to get new contributors?
    - davidgerard 10y ago
      How much are you thinking? That is, at what point is your claim testable?
  - theandrewbailey 10y ago
    The thing with OpenOffice is that (mostly) everyone abandoned it for a better governed fork long before it got handed to the ASF.
- nbevans 10y ago
  Presumably that Oracle will sue them for patent infringement several years down the line when the claimed damages is far higher.

dboreham 10y ago

Time to buy some JetBrains stock..

reitanqild 10y ago
Why? If anything Netbeans should be more attractive if it is released from Oracle.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > If anything Netbeans should be more attractive if it is released from Oracle. Until the community around it solidifies and proves that it is committed and capable, it will probably be less attractive than when it was backed by Oracle.

dr_faustus 10y ago

Is it me or has Apache increasingly become the place open source projects of big companies go to die? OpenOffice, Geronimo, Harmony, Wave, etc.pp. I really think that Apache should stop incubating projects which were essentially discarded by their corporate owners. Successful OSS projects are either community projects from day one (HTTPd etc) or require (at least initially) strong interest and involvement of the company that donates the code. How can you expect a community to magically develop around an abandoned project?

orionblastar 10y ago
Actually I think this is the way that FOSS projects are designed. If one group can't maintain it, another can take it over. Netbeans was fine for a while and then better tools came out. I used Frontpage and Visual Interdev in the mid to late 1990s, discovered Netbeans later on. I remember downloading Netbeans with the Java SDK.
johnhenry 10y ago
Arguably, it's not where open-source projects go to die, but rather, where we send projects that should die, but we're just not ready to let them go.
sspiff 10y ago
I was thinking the same thing. Many big open source projects are "entrusted" to Apache after their funding/support is cut off. Why is Apache taking these up / wasting time on them? So far all of them have died shortly after, with no significant improvements landing once Apache has taken over.
- ricksplat 10y ago
  > Why is Apache taking these up / wasting time on them? Presumably they get some funding in return. It makes $$$ sense for those entrusting if they have an established user base they no longer want to support.
  - jimjag 10y ago

marpstar 10y ago

NetBeans was the first IDE we used in college (circa 2006). It's ridiculously easy to get setup, as opposed to Eclipse which I've always disliked.

jitix 10y ago
Me too. I think eclipse is too complicated for a college student who's just upgrading from text editors or BlueJ. Netbeans is still my go-to IDE for prototyping stuff or writing simple stuff that dont need me handling multiple branches at once. The only reason its not my main IDE is the lack of workspaces and/or multiple instances (I did make it work once but its too tedious to set up again). One of my favorite analogies is that Netbeans is the iOS of the IDEs and Eclipse is the Android. Eclipse supports way fore features than Netbeans but Netbeans "just works".

nickserv 10y ago

Good news overall, at least with Apache the project stands a chance of continuing. Oracle has shown to be a poor manager of open-source projects. Maybe we can even get a proper Python plugin out of this ;-)

heisenbit 10y ago

The license changing to Apache is probably a good thing in the long run. The committer list in the proposal is roughly 1/3 Oracle. One can only hope they continue to be committed to it. It is certainly an ominous sign for the Java community in general that the designated steward is divesting tooling.