NetBeans started in 1995/96 in Prague, in the Czech Republic, as a student project. Sun Microsystems acquired and open sourced it in 2000 and, with the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle in 2010, became part of Oracle. Throughout its history in Sun Microsystems and Oracle, NetBeans has been free and open source and has been leveraged by its sponsor as a mechanism for driving the Java ecosystem forward.
the proposal : Apache NetBeans will continue to focus on the areas it has focused on while sponsored by Sun Microsystems and Oracle. It will continue to primarily focus on providing tools for the Java ecosystem, while also being focused on tools for other ecosystems, languages and technologies, such as JavaScript, PHP, and C/C++. It will continue to actively support its community by means of mailing lists, tutorials, and documentation.
origin - http://www.pipiscrew.com/?p=6079 netbeansproposal