VANCOUVER, British Columbia – May 24, 2000 – ActiveState, a leading supplier of products and services supporting open source software, announced today that the company will use Mozilla software code as a cross platform development framework for Komodo, its Perl and Python integrated development environment (IDE). Komodo is a full-featured, cross-platform, professional development environment with characteristics not traditionally available with current scripting languages. Its timesaving features include online help (giving programmers quick access to definitions, discussions, and examples) and an interactive debugger (allowing programmers to see the program, even if it is running on a remote server, to facilitate remote debugging).
mozilla.org, an open-source software project, provides open source Internet client software that includes a browser, mail and news functionality, and a toolkit for developing web-based applications. Mozilla's code, designed for performance and portability and featuring industry-leading standards-support, has generated substantial interest in the open source community. mozilla.org receives code and contributions from both individual volunteers and from commercial entities using the Mozilla codebase as a foundation for product releases. Monthly stability releases are downloaded approximately 100,000 times from mozilla.org's Mountain View servers alone, with many contributing bug reports, code patches, and new features to the project.
"We view Mozilla as a very exciting platform as it offers an open, modern component framework for cross-platform application development," stated Dr. David Ascher, Senior Developer and Mozilla Product Leader, ActiveState. "Our contributions to the Mozilla open source effort will start with adding Python and Perl bindings to XPCOM, Mozilla's component architecture. This change will open the Mozilla architecture and eventually make it available to Perl and Python programmers."
"Mozilla's cross-platform, standards-based component technology is the natural foundation for cross platform development of web based applications," said Mitchell Baker, chief lizard wrangler at Mozilla.org. "ActiveState's selection of Mozilla as the foundation for its Komodo IDE demonstrates the versatility of the Mozilla development platform and will bring enormous benefits to the Mozilla community."
"We have been looking for a next-generation application framework for Komodo, our cross-platform Perl and Python IDE. As an open source project with a component architecture, Mozilla fits the bill," said Dick Hardt, CEO, ActiveState. "We have full confidence that the Mozilla framework will become a popular platform for Perl and Python programmers in the future."
"I've been lobbying the open source community for some time about the importance of having a web strategy on the client side, and the critical importance of the Mozilla project," said Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of technology information provider O'Reilly & Associates. ActiveState's use of Mozilla for its IDE is an incredibly important event for the whole open source movement. I predict that we'll see related announcements from many other projects in the months to come. Meanwhile, Mozilla has given ActiveState a huge leg up in setting the new standard for programming tools and support for Perl and Python."
