Java as Open Source Platform

It was the announcement of Pulse 2 availability that triggered my thought flow.

What is Pulse?

A quote from the official website:

Pulse is an easy way to obtain, configure and manage your Eclipse-based products.

In other words, Pulse is a product management solution for Eclipse platform.

Pulse is another example of forward thinking by Genuitec as it manifests their understanding of the crucial role of integrated approach to the delivery of platform-based solutions.

Red Hat was the first to understand the importance and value of the integrated delivery approach in the open source arena. RHEL's tremendous success is due to its quality selection and rock solid integration of freely available components built around Linux kernel, the platform.

SourceLabs with their SASH stack (Spring, Axis, Struts, Hibernate, and later Tomcat) is a glimpse of what can be done for Java in the vein similar to what Red Hat has done for Linux. What SourceLabs lacks is the scale - common requirements of an enterprise project go way beyond SASH.

If the scale, i.e. the range and variety of available components, is not an issue, you might still be better off with such a framework as Grails - an excellent integrated solution for many practical purposes.

Java is an open source platform. As a platform it needs an integrated management solution for the products built on top of it. SourceLabs' SASH and Grails are the steps in the right direction.