Jul 12
13

GWT is Going Open Source

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GWT has been picking up steam over the last several years.  Every time Google releases an update, there is new and innovative changes including compiler speed, profiling tools, HTML 5 support, and WYSIWYG editors.  They have gone and done it again! 

Ray Cromwell, the technical lead, announced at Google I/O that once GWT 2.5 is released, the Google Web Toolkit is going to be released as an open source project.  Google is going to relinquish control to a committee which will decide the direction of this tool.Cromwell is going to be the committee chairperson along with folks from some well known companies such as Sencha, Red Hat, and Vaadin.  Other individuals include well known advocates such as Daniel Kurka, Christian Goudreau, and Thomas Broyer.

What is this going to do for the GWT community?  Great question.  Apparently, the group has already decided to change code repositories from Subversion to Git and to change the development effort slightly by creating two major code branches: a bleeding edge and more mature beta branch.  I for one am excited about being able to try out the latest and greatest they have to offer!

When is this going to happen?  From what Cromwell said, the major move is happening after GWT 2.5 comes out which is rumored to be around the first of August.

Are you concerned about this radical move from Google?  Many people are, but I would remind you back when IBM did the same thing with their Eclipse product.  It was a good tool before they opened it up, but once they did it became the leading tool in the market place.

What do you think about this move?  I’d love to hear your comments.

This entry was posted on July 13, 2012 at 8:31 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in GWT News by Jeff Richley 2 Comments

2 Responses to "GWT is Going Open Source"

  • Stephan says:
    July 31, 2012 at 1:29 pm

    I like Google’s move. It makes it a bit clearer which way GWT is heading. A clear future for an open source lib is very important to keep on gaining traction. However it does indicate that Google does not want to use GWT for their main internal technology stack.

    The good news is that Vaadin, is incorporating GWT more and more, this will give confidence to the community that besides Google another company is investing into it.

  • Jeff Richley says:
    July 31, 2012 at 4:43 pm

    I’d agree that it is certainly a great move, it shows that the community is behind it. You may have made a leap of logic by saying that Google doesn’t want to use it in their main stream. If you listen to the Google I/O chats, it sounds like they are doing even more with it, now more than ever.

    There are quite a few newer frameworks and tools that are integrating it. Vaadin is certainly a great tool to have integration with.

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