The Red Hat and Exadel arrangement provides a new twist on partnerships in that it is not an acquisition and provides just a potential for future revenues from services, said Raven Zachary, senior analyst with The 451 Group.

"Here you've got two commercial firms exchanging IP (intellectual property) with only a promise of revenue-sharing in the future. It's a fascinating model," Zachary said.

"There's a risk here for Exadel," in giving away its IP, but Exadel believes the move provides greater opportunities, Zachary said.

RichFaces and Ajax4jsf provide models for building rich Internet and Web 2.0 applications, Red Hat said. When combining these Exadel developer tools with JBoss Enterprise Middleware, Red Hat can offer a development and deployment platform for developers to assemble SOA components and Web 2.0 applications with less coding, Red Hat and Exadel said.

RichFaces and Ajax4jsf are available now as JBoss RichFaces and JBoss Ajax4jsf on JBoss.org under the LGPL (Lesser GNU General Public License). Red Hat is working to open source Exadel Studio Pro as Red Hat Developer Studio under the GNU GPL (General Public License), with availability planned for later in the first half of 2007.