Open source Java development environment NetBeans has achieved top-level project status at the Apache Software Foundation.

NetBeans is the integrated development environment (IDE) associated first with Sun Microsystems and later with Oracle, which acquired Sun in 2010. Oracle supported NetBeans until 2016, when it contributed the code to the Apache Incubator. The Java IDE has just graduated from the incubator and is open to a broad community of committers.

As an Apache project, NetBeans is more likely to attract contributions from committers than it did in association with a commercial entity.

NetBeans' beginnings Mike Milinkovich Mike Milinkovich NetBeans is among the most popular Java IDEs, although it has lost some luster of late. It was launched as a student project in 1996 before Sun acquired it in 2000 and began to invest in the platform to improve it for Java developers. Sun also acquired NetBeans to compete with the primarily IBM-built Eclipse IDE in 2001 and contributed to an open source consortium consisting of IBM, Red Hat, SUSE and others. "Java developers are fortunate to have choice in their tools, and competition makes us all better," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, based in Ottawa.

Java IDE wars The war between Eclipse and NetBeans became intense, with Eclipse pretty much winning the war to become the more popular Java IDE. However, both IDEs had to contend with the upstart IntelliJ IDEA, a new Java IDE from JetBrains, which today is perhaps the most popular IDE, depending on whom you ask and where you look. "IntelliJ definitely dominates today and is my personal choice," said Martijn Verburg, CEO of London-based jClarity and co-lead of the London Java User Group. "NetBeans is my second favorite due to its great UX around build tools. I think it's important that there's some decent choice, which drives innovation." The PopularitY of Programming Language Index ranks Eclipse as the top Java IDE. NetBeans ranks as the second most popular Java IDE, and IntelliJ comes in third. However, according to the results of the 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, IntelliJ is the most popular Java IDE, with 25.4% of respondents using it. Eclipse is the second most popular, with 14.4%. And NetBeans is third, with 5.9%. Joshua Bloch, a professor at the Institute for Software Research at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and formerly a distinguished engineer at Sun and chief Java architect at Google, is a longtime IntelliJ user and considers it the standout IDE. "With my limited knowledge, it feels like IntelliJ won," he said. "Students at CMU have largely switched from Eclipse to IntelliJ. I don't know many people who use NetBeans." However, some big Java supporters use NetBeans and publically sing its praises. James Gosling, lead creator of Java, said on Twitter that he's been "happily" using NetBeans on Amazon Corretto. "It's all rock-solid," he said.