HTML5 development has made some major gains of late—just about every field of endeavor from gaming to productivity software has seen some kind of new advantage come from HTML5—but that doesn't mean that development has started to slow up any. Indeed, Telerik is looking to make a major new play in the field of HTML5 development, bringing its Kendo UI Mobile package to the open source market with the release of Kendo UI Core.

The Kendo UI Core, at last report, represented much of what Telerik had to offer in terms of HTML5 development tools, and represents most of Telerik's Kendo software library for both Web and mobile applications. More specifically, the Kendo UI Core offers up an array of widgets involved in building user interfaces (UI), and similar framework-related features. Included are fully 38 user interface widgets, including things like drop-down lists and calendars, as well as data validation tools in the framework department. The library is said to work smoothly with Bootstrap and AngularJS, among other major Javascript libraries.

The Kendo UI Core system was designed to join the Icenium cross-platform mobile application development system, regarded as Telerik's flagship system. Released under the Apache 2.0 license, this allows users easy access to the system overall, and to put it to work in developing other tools.

In turn, according to reports, Telerik hopes that putting the Kendo UI Core out in open source will allow for many new contributions to the overall code base, which it will in turn be able to use in its own commercial releases. Plus, as Telerik continues along on its own development path, further additions of its own will likely be made to the code base that others can use, refine, and develop further to fit other commercial product.

Considering that Telerik's line of development products are already being put to work by over 40,000 different organizations, at last report, it's not much of a surprise that Telerik has plenty to offer in the Kendo UI Core. While some might be surprised to see Telerik giving a big portion of its work away, this is actually a good move in the long run. With the code open source, that means there will likely be plenty of new contributions to said code, and that in turn can give Telerik a further advantage in the field, making it able to offer more, and more new, products into the market. All these new products would cement Telerik's lead in the market, allowing its name recognition to give it some extra fuel besides. Microsoft (News – Alert) was recently seen doing something similar with its WinJS JavaScript library, so there's clear precedent for taking such a step.

While Telerik may not get a bounty of code products out of this new development—and only time will really tell just how successful this project ultimately is—even one might well be enough to make it worthwhile, and with this, Telerik has secured its place as a leader in the field, offering up the foundation of likely several new tools to emerge. The release of Kendo UI Core might well be one of the best moves Telerik has ever made.