Those of you who are eager to know which of the two main open source Java based IDEs Oracle would support -- NetBeans, which is a product Oracle has inherited from Sun, or Eclipse, which was originally created and still heavily backed by IBM but has wider market share -- your wait is over. Oracle is choosing both!

That is the impression you'd get from reading this piece on Developer.com, anyway. Of course, as I noted last week, Oracle would like you to believe that it is supporting all flavors of Java equally, when that probably isn't true either. Oracle's spokesperson told Developer.com that "both products are being actively developed and are both part of Oracle's Developer Tools strategy." Oracle's Eclipse focus is on the Enterprise Pack for Eclipse, which aims to "support ... developers building applications on the Oracle stack" (e.g., Oracle's database, Oracle Coherence, and the WebLogic app servers). Meanwhile, "NetBeans is targeted at being the number-one open source IDE for all of the Java technologies. Its focus is to ensure that Java developers of any skill level can be productive in building with and taking fullest advantage of all the Java technologies."

To me, that sounds like "NetBeans is for beginners and dabblers, while our Eclipse plugins are for serious enterprise people who develop for the products we sell for money." There's nothing wrong with maintaining separate products for different markets, obviously; it's pretty much Oracle's stated strategy for databases, with MySQL at the low end and Oracle's home-grown database at the high end. But, as is the case with MySQL and Oracle's database, with NetBeans and Eclipse you have two offerings that aren't versions of the same product, but two products with separate origins and separate codebases to be maintained. That seems like it will make a lot of work for Oracle employees, and make it less seamless to "graduate" from one product to the other.

Oracle has a lot on its plate when it comes to this merger -- it's currently working on an attempt to move information from Sun's Web portals to a newly redesigned Oracle Technology Network site, for instance -- but this IDE positioning sounds less like a coherent strategy than a move to stick existing products into marketable slots, at least for the time being. And then, of course, there's the matter of Oracle's own homegrown (and closed source) JDeveloper IDE, which went completely unmentioned in Developer.com's questioning. It seems likely to me that some newer, grander plan will emerge at a later date -- but that makes it hard to make plans based on the current situation.