Adobe will make its Flex Flash tool open-source, the company announced last week.
The company on Wednesday is expected to announce the move, which will start when it releases a beta of the next version of Flex, code-named Moxie, in June.
By the time Adobe releases the final version of Moxie, which will be called Flex 3, near the end of the year, it expects to have a fully functioning open-source project, company executives said Tuesday. Adobe intends to use the Mozilla Public License.
The company said it will open-source the Flex software development kit, which includes a compiler and libraries designed to speed up development. It plans to continue to sell Flex Builder, an Eclipse-based development tool, and Flex Data Services, server software for accessing corporate databases.
Flex is one of a growing number of alternatives for building so-called rich Internet applications, which sport an interactive front-end interface. Using the development framework, programmers create an application that can run within Adobe's Flash Player or Apollo, its "player" for desktop applications.
