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Oracle buying JBoss? Who cares?

Posted on February 10, 2006 by Bill Dudney

Ok, I've been following the hype and speculation about Oracle buying JBoss but the latest bit that I read on Business Week really got my dander up. Its not the article from BW that was irritating at all it was the comment by some one claiming to be 'Siddharth Gulhati'. I don't know Sid but his comment is over the top for me.

Quoth Sid;

Guys! Open source is definitely under threat, especially if the top open source players JBoss, Zend and Sleepycat are ready to sell off their passion and commitment for a chunk of money. I would like to ask them: Where is your passion and commitment to serve the community? Does it still exist, or has it been completely wiped off by a few dollars. I bet, post aquisition of these open source players by market leaders and commercializers like Oracle, the term open source itself will lose its meaning.

Come on Sid! JBoss sucks as open source. It is really just a propritary model (i.e. Oracle) on a public CVS tree. How many committers on any part of the JBoss stack have you heard of that are not JBoss employees? I susspect that # is approaching zero... And sheesh, give me a break Sid, why is it bad for someone to make some $ from their great work and passion. I mean come on, if you don't make money off something you are passionate about I pitty you! If the community was truly open (i.e. the community was really about the technology and not about gratifying egos) then the purchase of one company that provides support would be a good thing for the community as a whole.

There is a lot more to be said about this for sure, but I'm trying to finish a project before I start ranting on open source business models. No I don't have all the answers but I really hate JBoss.com as a model.

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