The Apache Software Foundation has added BEA Systems' Project Beehive as an open source project in its software development community.

Based on the runtime application framework in BEA WebLogic Workshop, Apache Beehive is an open source foundation for building enterprise Java and service-oriented architecture applications.

It is expected to be available this summer for free under the standard Apache 2.0 licence.

Apache Beehive will build on Apache projects such as XMLBeans, Tomcat, Struts, and Axis. With Beehive, BEA said it is helping to strengthen the open source community by contributing engineering talent and input from the larger BEA WebLogic Workshop developer community.

"Through Apache Beehive, BEA is broadening the appeal of its innovations by collaborating with the open source community," said Greg Stein, chairman of the Apache Software Foundation, in a statement.

"With the momentum of the open source community, Apache Beehive has the potential to make Java enterprise application development easier to use, giving developers state-of-the-art innovations for any Java platform."

Scott Dietzen, chief technology officer at BEA Systems, said in a statement: "The Apache Foundation was our first choice for the Beehive open source project.

"With the Apache community's help in open sourcing the Workshop application framework, we hope to help a greater number of Java developers build and orchestrate Java applications far more easily and without having to sacrifice portability and long-term investment protection."

More details on Project Beehive can be found here.