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Progress Software Corp., a supplier of technology for building e-business solutions, today announced plans to release the source code of its Application Development Environment (ADE) under an open source licensing model. Through the Progress Open Source Software Exchange (POSSE), the company and its development community will collaborate to enhance, extend and create more powerful tools for building e-business applications. Developers who are interested in participating in POSSE will be able to register at www.possenet.org starting December 18, 2000.

Using the Progress 4GL, approximately 2,000 Progress Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) have built and deployed over 5,000 applications for more than 100,000 customer sites around the world. POSSE will provide this community with the opportunity to influence the strategic direction of the development environment they use to build business applications. Participants will be able to add functionality, obtain immediate access to subject experts, trouble-shoot and submit patches, and promote their own expertise in a forum of their peers.

"Progress Software has always respected our development community as a valued extension of our company," said Joseph Alsop, Progress Software president and founder. "POSSE and the open source model will leverage their knowledge and cumulative expertise to further enhance our ADE and act as a catalyst to broaden the community."

Tools Available to POSSE Community
Progress Software will make the source code available for all of its Version 9.1B 4GL-based application development tools, including:

• AppBuilder, which supports development of GUI (Graphical User Interface),
• WebSpeed Workshop for development of Internet transaction processing applications,
• SmartObjects, an advanced object-oriented programming environment (patent announced in July of this year: http://www.progress.com/releases/070700.htm),
• Internet Component Framework (ICF), which supports complex component-based business logic,
• Data Dictionary, which allows the creation and maintenance of database definitions,
• TranMan (translation manager), which facilitates the translation of applications into other languages, and
• Results, an end-user reporting tool.

These application development tools are also commercially available in the product Progress ProVision Plus. The company will continue to distribute the ProVision Plus toolset commercially under warranty and with full technical support.

"In addition to its use in building applications, the highly flexible Progress 4GL language is also used to create much of our application development toolset. With the growth of the open source movement, we have seen an opportunity to provide a way for our partners to work more collaboratively with us to improve the tools they use," said David Ireland, vice president and general manager, Worldwide Field Operations. "Progress Software has dedicated a staff of developers to this effort and invested a significant amount of time, resources and funding to insure its success."

Progress developers are understandably enthusiastic about POSSE. "We would like to praise Progress for their far-reaching vision of the future," commented Julian Lyndon-Smith, administrator of the OpenAppBuilder Community Web site, regarding this initiative.

Possenet.org is being managed and hosted by CollabNet, a provider of collaborative software development platforms and services based on open source tools and principles. "By offering their 4GL source code to their development partners in an open source environment, Progress Software is at the vanguard of the leading commercial software vendors," said Bill Portelli, president and CEO, CollabNet. "Progress Software is a good example of how global enterprises can benefit from harnessing open source and Internet technologies to collaborate with their own people and those of strategic customers and partners."

POSSE adopts Mozilla Public License
Progress Software will make the source code of its ADE available under an open source license based on the Mozilla Public License 1.1, which is recognized by the open source community as practical and compliant with the Open Source Definition (reference www.opensource.org/osd.html). Progress Software Corporation wants to actively encourage contributions to this source code while meeting the expectations of its ISVs, third parties and the open source software community. Progress Software chose the MozPL 1.1 as the base for its open source licensing model because it best meets the needs of all of its constituencies.

The Progress ADE is used to create business applications that employ Progress Software deployment products, including the Progress AppServer, WebSpeed Transaction Server, and the Progress RDBMS, cited by Gartner/Dataquest as the leading Embedded Database worldwide for the past three years.

How to Join POSSE
Starting December 18, 2000, participants will be able to register by visiting www.possenet.org. Until then, they can sign up to receive information at http://register.possenet.org.

About Progress Software
Progress Software Corp. is a global supplier of software products and services for developing, deploying and managing e-business applications. Progress Software Corporation offers messaging servers, application servers, databases and application development and management products.

Progress Software Corporation's partners include more than 2,000 application service providers (ASPs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) who supply annually over $5 billion in Progress-based applications and related services. Progress Software Corporation's products are used by over 10,000 organizations across 100 countries worldwide, including 60% of Fortune 100 companies.

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