Middleware giant TIBCO has open-sourced a QA application based on the popular Selenium Core test tool. TIBCO says its General Interface Test Automation Kit (GITAK) helps developers with QA on AJAX components and other rich Internet applications (RIAs).

GITAK, which is available for free download now, runs directly in a browser and allows developers to create automated test cases and run scenarios to validate that an application is performing as expected. Once engineers have built a library of test cases, GITAK can test the AJAX applications and apply changes to them with the push of a button. Sounds like a virtuous cycle that works well in open source — the more it’s used the more valuable it becomes.

Almost every news cycle brings new reports of untested or poorly tested software causing havoc, and possible exposure, for companies and customers, whether it’s the loss of personal data, the failure of online trading systems, or students receiving erroneous admissions information from colleges and universities — just to name a few. RIAs will be better received if they can avoid such hiccups in post production.

JavaScript and AJAX applications have been inherently difficult to debug, as TIBCO points out. TIBCO is ramping up with AJAX offerings, and making them look good and easy to enjoy, via open source, for lots of developers. This RIA strategy fits nicely with the back-end SOA stuff TIBCO is producing, making it number 2 in SOA supplies behind IBM, according to recent research by Gartner. The road to SOA is paved with good intentions?

Also jumping on the open source is good for ya bandwagon, IBM and Covalent Technologies announced recent contributions to the Apache Geronimo community to help users move from the JBoss Application Server to the open source Apache Geronimo application server. What’s good for the goose …
The migration tool being contributed to Apache converts applications built for JBoss to Geronimo by generating the appropriate configuration files.

The feel good about open source movement remains vibrant for more and more companies. You have to wonder when Microsoft is going to open source its migration tools for moving everything to Windows. Opps, that might allow those tools to be reverse-engineered to go in reverse. Never mind.