ObjectWeb-driven Web Tools Platform Proposal Endorsed by Eclipse Foundation

SAN FRANCISCO, CA August 4, 2004 -- ObjectWeb, the international not-for-profit consortium dedicated to open-source infrastructure software, announced today the success of the initiative that led to the launch of the Web Tools Platform project conforming to a proposal driven by ObjectWeb and under the umbrella of Eclipse, a community committed to the implementation of a universal platform for tools integration.

The effort to assemble the Web Tools Platform (WTP) proposal leveraged the expertise in open-source web and Java(tm) / J2EE(tm) environments accumulated by ObjectWeb throughout more than 60 projects, including Lomboz, the popular open-source Eclipse plug-in for J2EE / Web Services and JOnAS, the leading non-commercial J2EE application server.

ObjectWeb began working on the WTP proposal in February 2004. The proposal was put out for public review on April 27, 2004. It has been formally approved by the Eclipse board on June 25, 2004, after a workshop hosted by ObjectWeb in Grenoble, France, on June 16-19, 2004. The business-neutral, not-for-profit status of the ObjectWeb consortium and the Eclipse Foundation enabled a seamless cooperation between the two organizations.

"The contribution of the ObjectWeb consortium to set up an Eclipse project demonstrates the true commitment of ObjectWeb to facilitating the development of open-source software in a professional and ethical way. The cooperation between Eclipse and ObjectWeb is definitely an addition to the developers and users common good," says Bjorn Freeman-Benson of the University of Washington, selected by the Eclipse Foundation to lead the WTP project. "ObjectWeb is an amazing and powerful group. With such support, I am confident that WTP will be successful and will quickly become the open-source platform of choice underlying vendor-specific J2EE tooling."

Christophe Ney, ObjectWeb Executive Director and rapporteur of the Web Tools Platform proposal, explains: "By facilitating the creation of WTP under the umbrella of Eclipse, we served our members and the open-source community at large by doing so to complement ObjectWeb's industrial-grade infrastructure software with high-end development tools. The effort we jointly lead with the Eclipse management team to set up the Web Tools Platform proposal reflects our common commitment to make open-source solutions meet or exceed the expectations of the most demanding developers and users in the enterprise."

ObjectWeb members Bull, Eteration, INRIA, Librados, Open Wide, Thales IS, Together Teamlösungen, XQuark Group have committed resources to the WTP, and so did non-members Exadel, Frameworx, Genuitec, IBM, Innoopract.

Dominique Potier, Chief Scientist Software Technologies, Thales Group, explains: "We at Thales just defined Netframework, a new architecture for our information system which includes a J2EE application server. This solution will be deployed on a limited number of sites this summer, and in all Thales in 2005. The Eclipse Web Tools Platform project adds an important value to the Eclipse IDE and makes it a platform of choice for Thales internal information system as well as for the software intensive systems that Thales develop for their customers. Thales, with several other companies, is committed to the success of this project and wishes it a long life."

Naci Dai, eteration's Chief Scientist/Managing Director and Lomboz project leader, explains: "Eclipse Web Tools Platform project will become one the primary platforms of an industry wide effort to simplify and standardize J2EE development. WTP builds an open-source task force that is capable of creating best-of-breed solutions to achieve this goal. The ObjectWeb consortium has provided the much needed drive to make the project happen."

Fima Katz, President and CEO, Exadel, Inc., says: "Exadel has been excited to contribute to the Eclipse Web Tools project under the leadership of ObjectWeb. Thanks to ObjectWeb restarting this initiative, we look forward to great things happening through the development of this toolset."

THE WEB TOOLS PLATFORM: WEB AND J2EE
The WTP will initially focus on infrastructure for tools used to build applications for standards-based web and Java/J2EE runtime environments. Outside the project's scope will be support for vendor-specific application architectures or for extensions not backed by the Java Community Process (JCP). The project will be further limited to providing infrastructure for tooling proper, in contrast to infrastructure related to the application run-time.

Eric von der Heyden, Managing Director, Innoopract Informationssysteme GmbH, says: "We are very pleased to see the Web Tools Project get started. Web Tools will provide Eclipse users a much-needed boost to Eclipse further into the Web-development realm and will ultimately increase the already impressive rate of adoption of Eclipse as a development platform. As providers of Eclipse-based Web development tools and applications, Innoopract looks forward to contributing our knowledge and experience in Java Web development to help Eclipse provide the maximum value to developers."

Todd E. Williams, Genuitec VP Technology, says: "The Web Tools Platform will allow Eclipse Foundation members to cooperate in order to build an extensible product architecture that will enable web-related tools to integrate and interoperate in a seemless manner within Eclipse. Genuitec is pleased to see the project formed and will work diligently toward its success."

ABOUT OBJECTWEB
Founded in 2002 by Bull, France Telecom and INRIA, ObjectWeb is a consortium of leading companies and research organizations from around the world who have joined forces to produce next generation of open-source Middleware. ObjectWeb's goal is to provide Real-Time Enterprises with independent solutions which combine quality and robustness at the best possible performance/cost ratio. ObjectWeb targets alternative solutions to proprietary products for e-business, EAI, data connectivity, grid computing, and enterprise messaging. Based on open standards, ObjectWeb's middleware includes application servers, components, frameworks and tools. Examples of ObjectWeb's "cost killer" platforms are JOnAS - an open-source implementation of the J2EE specification, JORAM - a message-oriented middleware with JMS(TM) / SOAP connectors and Enhydra - a Java/XML application server.

http://www.objectweb.org

Java, J2EE, and all Java-based trademarks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Other products mentioned are the trademarks of their respective holders. Investors are cautioned that statements in this press release that are not strictly historical statements, including, without limitation, management's plans and objectives for future operations, and management's assessment of market factors, constitute forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties..




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