The battle for developers heated up in 2004 as established providers adjusted to the growing impact of open-source development on infrastructure software and tools.

Industry heavyweights Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and Sun Microsystems and scores of others are all wooing programmers with tools to build and run the next generation of modular, flexible business systems based on a design called services-oriented architecture.

Compounding the already cut-throat competition among incumbent providers, open-source middleware and tools became more viable. Products matured, and companies to support the software emerged.

IBM managed to co-opt the open-source movement perhaps as well as anyone with Eclipse, an open-source development tool framework that IBM spun off as a separate open-source foundation.

IBM then rattled the industry by sending an open letter to Sun, urging Sun to make Java open source. A massive debate ensued, including a panel at the JavaOne conference, but Sun has not ceded to the request.

Not to be outdone, BEA Systems, which had a tough year financially, started the Beehive project around its development tools in an effort to curry favor with open-source programmers.

Other companies building out their software suites in an effort to attract developers include Red Hat, which now distributes an open-source application server, and Novell, which released version 1.0 of its Mono development software.

Meanwhile, Microsoft and Sun made perhaps the most bold move to appeal to customers by announcing a sweeping agreement to bury the legal hatchet and work together on interoperability. That plan remains a work in progress, but the companies are confident that working together they can outrun behemoth IBM and open-source products.

Pure-play open-source companies emerged--and grew. Companies MySQL, JBoss and Zend Technologies released product updates designed to attract corporate customers that once believed open-source software meant only the Linux operating system and Apache Web server. Open-source support specialists SpikeSource, with Kim Polese as CEO, and SourceLabs also formed.

The Microsoft world of development tools was active in 2004, but not always with great news. Microsoft said that it would delay the release of its much-anticipated SQL Server 2005 database, code-named Yukon, and its flagship development tool, called Visual Studio 2005. The Longhorn version of Windows and the WinFS file system also got pushed back until 2006.

Meanwhile, developers and corporate customers had to contend with an increasingly long list of Web services-related protocols and proposed standards. To some, the WS* (pronounced "WS star") specifications were simply too confusing to keep track of and learn; others advocated a simpler approach to Web development called REST.

--Martin LaMonica