News

Deco Software Acquired, Leaving Its React Native IDE to Live On in Open Source

• By David Ramel
• May 3, 2017

Developer tools company Deco Software Inc. is closing shop to join Airbnb, leaving its React Native IDE to live on in open source only.

Almost a year ago, Deco made its namesake React Native IDE free and open source, at the time claiming that more than 15,000 developers had registered for the beta announced just a couple months earlier.

React Native is a two-year-old mobile development framework created -- and subsequently open sourced -- by Facebook for building native iOS and Android mobile apps solely with JavaScript.

When Deco introduced its Deco IDE for React Native on GitHub last year, it described it as "the all-in-one solution for building React Native applications," though it only works on OSX, not Linux or Windows.

The project has since garnered 4,876 stars, 13 contributors and two releases under an AGPL-3.0 license.

"You can get started right away on your React Native project by installing Deco and creating a new project -- it's fast and there's no manual setup needed," the GitHub description reads. "File scaffolding handles your boilerplate. Ready-made components drop right into your code. Properties are graphically editable through the property inspector. It's an entirely new way to write, tweak, and re-use code."

Deco worked on development projects with Airbnb and subsequently was acquired by the online marketplace and hospitality service that lets travelers rent accommodations.

Now, the Deco IDE site simply states:

When we founded Deco Software, we set out to create tools that bridge the gap between designers and engineers, allowing them to create the best possible product together.

Along the way we found an ally and partner in Airbnb. As we began to collaborate with the teams at Airbnb that are working on design tools and React Native, it became clear that Airbnb was the perfect place for us to continue our journey.

Today, we are excited to share that the entire Deco Software team is joining Airbnb where we will continue to advance tooling for designers and engineers. While we will no longer officially support Deco IDE as a product, it will live on as a free and open source project.

Thank you to all of our supporters.

The new site for the open source Deco IDE is now here, where developers can find downloads, documentation, a showcase, training resources and more.

In its update a year ago when Deco took the IDE to open source, the company seemingly had big plans for continuing.

"We plan to double down on stability and improve support for other platforms," co-founder Devin Abbott said at the time. "Deco lacks the robustness and plugin ecosystem of the long-standing incumbent developer tools: Xcode, Atom, etc. It's missing some key features around building and launching your app. It doesn't support Windows yet, and you have to run your emulator manually if you want to test on Android.

"We intend to continue to improve the developer experience by building bold, experimental features in Deco. To pave the way for radical improvements, we are willing to deviate from the path many existing IDEs have taken."

Now, that alternative path is left for community contributors to continue upon.