Open source solutions currently cover a wide range of applications and tools although a whiff of controversy continues to linger around them. Supporters note almost every aspect of information technology has a reliable open source application at least as robust as commercial or proprietary counterparts, while critics discount the sustainability of open source in the market and regard the future as a continuing mix of open source and commercial solutions. However, open source is gaining a foothold in the high-tech community. According to one survey, only 29% of enterprise developers felt open source code was viable in 2000, increasing to 58% in 2004 and 63% in 2005. Some vendors regard open source as an excellent inducement for innovation while lacking the promise of long-term reliability. One open source sector experiencing significant growth is middleware, or application servers. Such platforms as JonAS, JBoss, and Apache are proving themselves as J2EE tools. While Microsoft Corp.'s .NET-based application server platform claims to lead this sector with 37% of the market, Apache is not far behind. Industry observers note the increasing sophistication of open source code development, motivating such large vendors as BEA and IBM to dedicate increasing staff toward developing open source projects. Few would quibble with the statement that Windows is the most-used development platform, UNIX an increasingly close second, and Linux a distant third; but in development environments, UNIX leads.