A.3. Using NetBeans as a development environment

NetBeans is an open-source IDE that is dual-licensed under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) and the GNU Public License version 2 (GPLv2). Originally created by students at Charles University in Prague as a closed-source product, the IDE was purchased by Sun in 1999 and subsequently open-sourced.

NetBeans has gone through many changes since its humble beginnings, and it has become the flagship IDE offered by Sun, often bundled along with Java Development Kit downloads. At the time of this writing, Oracle has announced continued support for it, so it isn’t going anywhere.