Aestiva, a company that specializes in “webputing” (Web-based computing), has introduced Aestiva Bundle Bee, an application that gives Web developers the ability to package and copy-protect Web-based products for commercial distribution.
Aestiva products are cross-platform. The company says they run on Mac OS X, Linux, Sun, BSD, Cobalt, SGI and Windows.
“The Web is an ideal distribution and deployment medium for business applications,” said D. M. Silverberg, Aestiva’s director of technology, in a statement. “But the lack of copy-protection has been a hindrance. The Web is developer-friendly but product-unfriendly. We aim to change that.”
Bundle Bee is the latest add-on to HTML/OS, Aestiva’s flagship Web application development engine. The HTML/OS platform is used for building and deploying advanced Web sites and Web-based products. Like Java, the HTML/OS engine is cross-platform. Applications running on top of it run anywhere across the Web, Silverberg said.
Unlike Java, HTML/OS also runs in standard hosting accounts, includes a high-performance Web database engine and has an English-like development language, he added. Bundle Bee’s point-and-click wizard lets you create an icon for your product, copy-protect it, even give it a registration key. Using the wizard, Web developers can take any HTML/OS application and “scramble” it so source code cannot be revealed. Bundle Bee also compresses and packs up the application, along with any databases it uses, so it can be installed on any Web server regardless of the hardware used at the other end.
For more information about Aestiva Bundle Bee, visit the Aestiva Web site. Free over-the-Web demonstrations are available.