Bespin proposes an open extensible Web-based framework for code editing that aims to increase developer productivity, enable compelling user experiences, and promote the use of open standards.

Based upon discussions with hundreds of developers, and our own experience developing for the Open Web, we’ve come up with a proposed set of features along with some high-level goals:

* Ease of Use — the editor experience should not be intimidating and should facilitate quickly getting straight into the code
* Real-time Collaboration — sharing live coding sessions with colleagues should be easy and collaboratively coding with one or more partners should Just Work
* Integrated Command-Line — tools like vi and Emacs have demonstrated the power of integrating command-lines into editors; Bespin needs one, too
* Extensible and Self-Hosted — the interface and capabilities of Bespin should be highly extensible and easily accessible to users through Ubiquity-like commands or via the plug-in API
* Wicked Fast — the editor is just a toy unless it stays smooth and responsive editing files of very large sizes
* Accessible from Anywhere — the code editor should work from anywhere, and from any device, using any modern standards-compliant browser