Finland-based Helmi Technologies plans to open-source its AJAX-based (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) development platform for rich Internet applications (RIA) next month.The company’s Open Source RIA Platform goes into a beta release in October and ships in December. The platform represents an upgrade to the previously released Helmi RIA Platform. Featuring the company’s Virtual Browser technology to accommodates multiple browsers, Open Source RIA will be offered via a free, open source model, or through a fee-based model including customer support, Helmi officials said. “What Virtual Browser does is it makes sure that in every single browser, all commands are rendered to the browser in a standardized way,” said Juho Risku, CEO of Helmi. “We’re going open source with [the platform] because we want developers to be able to get access to it as quickly as possible,” said Jorden Woods, CEO of US operations for Helmi.Other components of Helmi’s platform include an IDE that leverages the Eclipse open source tools platform; a client framework that utilizes MVC (Model View Controller) technology and object orientation, and J2EE AJAX Server Connect, to assist Java developers with programming in AJAX. Java developers using the platform can become AJAX “experts” without needing to learn JavaScript, DHTML or exotic variants of XML, Helmi said. Software Development