BEA Hooks Up With ComponentSource For Online Marketplace

ComponentSource, an online site that sells components, or reusable code, will offer two BEA galleries--one for its WebLogic middleware and one for its WebLogic Workshop visual tool, said Scott Fallon, vice president of developer relations at BEA.

The WebLogic gallery will offer both free and commercial Java components created by ISVs that work with BEA products, Fallon said. The Workshop gallery also will offer code created by ISVs, but it will be in the form of visual controls, not Java code.

The site also will feature a dedicated BEA store that will sell controls for WebLogic Workshop, as well as reusable Java code for WebLogic middleware. "The store is a larger version of the galleries," Fallon said. The marketplace is available now at www.componentsource.com/bea.

ComponentSource also will host a larger marketplace, the BEA WebLogic Gallery, on BEA's dev2dev developer site. That site also will feature a BEA code gallery with reusable Java code for WebLogic middleware and WebLogic Workshop controls.

The site can be found at http://dev2dev.bea.com/components.

BEA hopes to woo a broader development base with its exposure on ComponentSource, as well as provide technology to promote Java development in general, Fallon said.

Earlier this year, BEA set a goal to reach 1 million developers by the end of 2003. They have since rescinded that goal and are taking a wait-and-see approach to building their developer base.

"We're seeing how it goes," Fallon said. "We're not publishing any hard goals."

BEA currently has about 500,000 developers for its technology, Fallon said.

Fallon said that ISVs also benefit from BEA's new ComponentSource galleries and store, since they can expose their technology to a greater number of developers and also sell components they have created.

BEA and ComponentSource also are working to develop a license for components that become part of a larger product, Fallon said.

For example, if an ISV buys a component on the ComponentSource site that another ISV created, there should be a standard way for the ISV who purchased the code to reuse it in a commercial product without allowing another developer to obtain the component from the commercial product without paying for it, Fallon said.

"The components are reusable to those that have bought a license to use them," Fallon said. "But we don't want someone picking [the component up who hasn't paid."

The terms of the license are pending, Fallon said.