TIBCO Donates Enterprise AJAX Tool to Dojo

TIBCO Software has donated its TIBCO General Interface source code to the open-source community via the Dojo Foundation.

TIBCO and the Dojo Foundation have established the General Interface project to give developers access to the General Interface source code and promote the rapid creation of reliable AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and X M L) applications, components and portlets with the look and feel of desktop GUI applications.  TIBCO's General Interface is an AJAX development tool set.

“General Interface is a complete AJAX-based rich Internet application [RIA] platform used by a large number of leading Global 2000 companies for their mission-critical Web applications and is the perfect complement to the Dojo Toolkit,” said Dylan Schiemann, vice president at the Dojo Foundation and CEO at SitePen. “Together, this family of developer tools presents developers with an array of choices, ensuring they have access to the right tools and support to be successful. 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.”

The partnership between the Dojo Foundation and SitePen expands TIBCO’s reach, bringing enterprise-class tools to individual developers and small development shops while providing the freedom of open-source licensing models.

General Interface is currently an open-source project hosted by TIBCO, available under the BSD open-source license, with an active online community that provides developers with source code, helper applications, discussion forums, and public defect and enhancement tracking. 

“By offering our General Interface source code to the Dojo development community, we hope to spark creativity and innovation in application development,” said Tom Laffey, executive vice president of Products and Technology at TIBCO. “Our partnership with the Dojo Foundation is just the next step in our overall open-source strategy. We are committed to bringing world-class products to the open-source community, offering our expertise and sharing the insight we gain from that community to enhance the value we provide to our worldwide enterprise customers. 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.”

Schiemann said the effort to get this deal working has been a long time coming. "One of Dojo's primary goals has been the reduction of reinventing the wheel and working together with others to create great open-source tools for Web application developers," he said. "I expect that in the short-medium term, developers will see an immediate benefit through an increase in the quality of both projects through shared knowledge, and development and integration efforts. I'm very excited to have General Interface be part of the Dojo Foundation, and TIBCO as a SitePen client."

Meanwhile, TIBCO General Interface – Enterprise Edition remains a key product in TIBCO’s SOA (service-oriented architecture) suite of products.