1) Competition is good and with the upcoming 6.0 release it is clear that NetBeans is a viable competitor to Eclipse (maybe the only real long term competitor). Support from HP would give NetBeans project more credibility and this open source software would become less dependent on Sun Microsystems.
2) HP Software is focused on the lifecycle approach to automation of IT processes (a.k.a. BTO) and a Java IDE would make the application and service development and testing stages of the lifecycle more developer friendly. NetBeans extensions for quality, SOA, diagnostics and other parts of HP software would fit nicely into this picture.
3) It would make me happy to see the NetBeans and Systinet teams to work together. And I understand that this is not a real reason but it would feel really good…
Comments
Considering that HP has been shipping NetBeans for years, it would make sense for that to become a more formal relationship.
I’d also note that HP has a stable of products that could leverage (and/or contribute to) an application framework. There may actually be an ROI to joining Netbeans…