FYI
Google Open-Sources AJAX Toolkit By Darryl K. Taft
December 12, 2006
Google Inc has open-sourced its tool set for building Web applications,
the Google Web Toolkit.
According
to a notice issued by Chris Ulbrich, a spokesperson for Mountain View,
Calif.-based Google, the company has open-sourced the GWT 1.3 release
candidate. Previous versions of the GWT were only partly open-sourced, Ulbrich
said.
In a
Dec. 12 blog post, Bruce Johnson, technical lead for GWT at Google, said,
"Today is quite a milestone for Google Web Toolkit: with the GWT 1.3
Release Candidate, our team is very happy to announce that all of GWT is open
source under the Apache 2.0 license."
Google
introduced GWT last May as a free development framework for writing AJAX (Asynchronous _javascript_
and XML) Web applications in the Java language. The toolset features a
debugging browser and a Java-to-_javascript_
compiler.
Ulbrich
said Google will be making the Google Web Toolkit development process
completely transparent, meaning that design discussions, feature
prioritization, bug fixing and roadmap planning will be done in an open Google
Group.
Click
here to read more about Google's connection to the open-source community.
"We
welcome anyone who wants to help make the Google Web Toolkit even better,"
Ulbrich said.
Meanwhile,
Johnson said the GWT team's mission is: "To radically improve the Web
experience for users by enabling developers
to use existing Java tools to build no-compromise AJAX for any modern browser." 
He
also said fully open-sourcing the technology was not a matter of if, but of
when Google would do it.
"Now
that GWT has some serious adoption and a lively user community, open-sourcing
is the obvious next step to help GWT evolve more quickly," Johnson said.
In
addition, Google has created a charter document for the effort, titled
"Making GWT Better," that describes the philosophical foundations of
GWT as well as how to compile GWT, contributing code, and participating in the
new Google Web Toolkit Contributors group, Johnson said.