Komodo Snapdragon
September 9th, 2007 • General
The Open Komodo Project is a new initiative from ActiveState 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.
— ActiveState, The Open Komodo Project
I had to hack my through marketing talk to realize this: Snapdragon wants to be Eclipse built with XUL and JavaScript, and ActiveState emphasizes it.
Open Komodo is not a product, but rather a code base upon which Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) can be developed.
Sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it?
The interesting thing is, Komodo is a monster (a lizard, if we’re nitpicking) developed using the same technologies that power Firefox. This could potentially lift Komodo’s spirits, and build a community around it. XUL and JavaScript are proven, open, and extensible, although they are yet to mature in terms of performance.
What surprises me is that ActiveState decided to release a whole new product instead of open-sourcing their free editor Komodo Edit. I know they’re extracting the code and not working from scratch. They want Snapdragon to be the editor of client-side languages, like HTML, CSS and JavaScript, but not of Perl, Python and Ruby. But still, why not go for a whole product? When you need community’s support, why not show good intentions? Be sure the Komodo community will appreciate it, and such an effort will eventually pay off.
2 Responses (Add Your Comment)
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Thank you Shane for responding.
ActiveState has my complete respect. I like your work just as much as I love Perl, and I’m thankful that you helped its widespread on an “exotic” platform as Windows. I believe that ActiveState doesn’t have ill intentions. It isn’t getting the praise it deserves.
I see where ActiveState is coming from, and I’m sure it’s a big decision for you to open source even the smallest bit of Komodo, since it’s your only commercial product.
However, I feel this conservative approach wouldn’t have the impact you’re looking for. Komodo is an old product, yet it haven’t managed to build a large community around it, even after extensions were introduced.
Open Komodo has made it to blogs, but many of them don’t sound as excited as they should be, as they are merely echoing your announcement. It’s sad, because Komodo deserves more.
To sum up. I second Matt (from PeerPressure). A Mozilla-based IDE should be the perfect platform to handle client-side Web languages. Komodo will not be able to beat Eclipse or tools like Aptana, nor should it even try, it’s a tool for a different medium.
Reply ↵
Hi, I just thought I’d respond to the last paragraph.
While many of us (at ActiveState) are involved in various open source communities, and run or help to run different projects, open sourcing a mature commercial product to provide an open version, build community, and maintain a commercial version is something new to ActiveState. It is also something few (though more every day) organizations have done and done well.
We’re going on the premise of open sourcing what is absolutely necessary and nothing more, because we can always open source more later. The open source version will have some features, and certainly editing capability, for any language.
As far as the focus on client side languages, we want to help develop an environment for the Open Web. We feel the issues and priorities for the Open Web are important. A “limited” focus also will help reduce the scope of the project which helps us, since this is a wee-bit of a learning curve for us. There certainly is not any ill intentions, just a slightly conservative approach for now.
Regards,
Shane Caraveo, Komodo Team Lead