Tibco Software acquired General Interface nearly two years ago, and is now offering an updated version that will be free to some users, as the company seeks to maintain its place at the growing AJAX development table.

Tibco General Interface version 3.1 Professional Edition is available to developers and organizations free of charge when they deploy publicly. For non-public deployments, Tibco offers what is cals "affordable license purchasing options for small user groups."

Tibco was not part of the recent Open AJAX initiative announced by IBM and others, but is talking to IBM about potentially becoming part of it, according to Kevin Hakma, director of product marketing for Tibco General Interface, in remarks made to AJAX Developer's Journal.

Meanwhile, the company is pushing forward with its own continuing strategy to reach AJAX developers. "We don’t want to impose a specific 'one-size-fits-all' approach to acquiring software," said Ram Menon (pictured), senior vice president, Worldwide Marketing, TIBCO Software. "Our new pricing and licensing model brings the proven enterprise benefits of General Interface to every corner of the developer community. We believe that this differentiated strategy will provide the flexibility for individuals and organizations to choose the best approach for developing, testing and deploying Rich Internet Applications using one of the most mature tools available today."

The new release features faster drag-and-drop visual authoring tools for standard XML & XSD, SOAP and WSDL communications, as well as HTTP/S GET and POST operations, dramatically reducing scripting time. In addition, users will have access to the TIBCO General Interface Developer Community, an existing online resource currently used by thousands of developers. And with its add-in architecture, TIBCO General Interface version 3.1 also enables additional 3rd party packages to easily plug into its development framework.

Unlike most Web development tools that require additional software such as plug-ins, Active-X controls or Java applets to be installed or added to the browser, Tibco General Interface works with existing capabilities of the browser, enabling users to get a full featured application instantly from a URL, according to information from Tibco. The product offers a "significantly reduced development time and cost through use of familiar APIs, visual authoring tools, step-through debugging and extensible, reusable components," the company said in an official statement. "As testimony to the product’s maturity, the visual tools are themselves a Web-based application powered by TIBCO General Interface – a full AJAX IDE running as an AJAX application."