Newton leverages OSGi and Service Component Architecture (SCA). Paremus has big ambitions for the project. "We want to provide an operating system for distributed systems, something that handles the full lifecycle the way an operating system handles things for a single machine," said Robert Dunne, developer architect at Paremus, of London.

"[Newton is] mainly OSGi-based but uses SCA to describe global structure," Dunne said.

"The main benefit [of Newton] is it manages the full lifecycle of distributed applications based on a single description," he said.

Verson 1.2 of Newton was released two weeks ago, featuring full support for Spring Dynamic Modules for OSGi. This capability enables use of the Spring programming model to write OSGi modules, Dunne said. Spring programmers in turn get the dynamic dependency offered by Spring. If services in a program change, OSGi can react to that while Spring cannot, Dunne said.

Paremus also offers a commercial version of Netwon, called Infiniflow, with capabilities such as better administrative tools and GUIs, said Dunne.

Newton can be downloaded here.

Also at EclipseCon this week, Teamprise announced availability of Teamprise 3.0, featuring client applications that provide Java and cross-platform development teams with access to the application lifecycle management features of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server.

Features in version 3.0 include a plug-in for the Eclipse IDE, an Explorer-style GUI application, and a command-line client. The three applications communicate with Team Foundation Server. Enhancements include full integration with Team Build and support for Check-in Policies, Teamprise said.

A new pricing plan for version 3.0 enables users to purchase individual clients based on needs. Previously, clients were available only as part of the bundled suite.