In a report at OpenEnterprise Trends.com - which bills itself as "The Open Source Portal for Enterprise Developers" - the CTO of Sun's Developer Products group, James Gosling, confirms that Sun will base its future product line on its Open Source NetBeans platform.

Sun's Engineering Director Steve Wilson explains that NetBeans 3.6 - currently in beta - will have a redesigned UI and more integrated workflow to help developers work with the code editor, debuggers, and the UI designer.

The report continues:

Code folding is also on the horizon, which will let devs more easily condense/expand code blocks when working with other team members. NetBeans 4.0, slated for this fall, looks to add support for quicker editing, automated refactoring (which would let devs rename methods and fields in one step) and an Ant-based project management system.

Gosling also said he was hopeful that the rift between NetBeans and Eclipse could be mended as talks continue between Sun and IBM. "Our future is NetBeans. We're doing an awful lot in tools," he said, adding that all Sun's future software products, including the core Java Studio Creator (formerly known as Rave), will be based on NetBeans.

In the view of the report's author Vince McCarthy,  "it looks as though Sun is content to drive 'co-opetition' among IDEs - both Open Source and vendor-supplied varieties."

"NetBeans may be the best example yet of signs of the challenge Sun faces in Java," McCarthy adds, "as it looks to actively compete with other Java providers while at the same time maintaining its role as standard-bearer of Java rules and standards."

The last word goes to Java co-creator, Gosling. Speaking of the emerging Java IDE competitive scene, he says:

"Part of us wants to do whatever it takes to win. But, if we blow up the league we know there is no game."