Interface 21 and economically rational developers...
Matt hit the nail on the head. Ben has a great point. This is exactly the same stuff that JBoss does/did. Rod is much less 'lawyery' (as Matt said and I've experienced, Rod has not come after me or anyone I've heard of with Cease and Desist letters) about it but that is only because the VC's just got their hooks into him. He will in time be forced to start enforcing Interface 21's trademarks just like JBoss must. And that is as it should be, please understand that I'm not hammering Rod, Interface 21 or even JBoss. (As much as I apparently like to do that, the only reason I've ever hammered on JBoss in the past is because they are something that everyone knows. Makes it much easier to discuss a concrete instance rather than some abstract notion).
So anyway we should try to be economically rational and tie our hard work and knowledge acquisition to truly open solutions instead of just being wowed by getting the source for free. Having the source is great, having freedom is even better.
In my opinion as the open source market matures folks like us (developers and consultants) will start to understand this kind of thing more and more. And as new opensource things come to the market we will be more aware of the fact that joining the Spring community enriches chiefly Interface 21 in the same way that joining the JBoss community chiefly enriches RedHat. Now of course as people involved in these communities we are able to make a living, but its only because we are playing the game by Interface 21's (or JBoss') rule book. If we want to do something with JBoss outside that rule book we are smacked down. In truly open communities like Eclipse or Apache you do get ownership when you join the community, true ownership, not just the source code.
And as I've said a bunch of times in the past that is what makes open source cool for me, I get ownership and freedom to do what I can, or am able, to enrich myself. If I'm good at it I help myself and the community. I help myself cause I get to bill, I help the community because I'm helping someone better understand what the community has built. Thus more people are using the software, more people are able to contribute and the ecosystem grows. The same thing has been happening since the beginning of IT, but its always been the companies that made the community.
We are in an age where big companies are not required for a piece of software to become widely used. Don't believe me? Take a look at appfuse. From Matt's passion to grok java web development came something that more than a couple of people have found useful. And there are many other examples of this kind of thing.
Back to Interface 21 and Spring. You can't justify VC and 10x - 20x revenue buy outs on the DHH philosophy. I tend to be with Matt on this (and alot other things too) that I prefer the DHH model of things, I prefer open communities, truly open, where the community decides direction not a single company or single person. Sure the folks that founded the community should be held in high regard and looked to for direction. But for the committers list to be restricted to one and only one company, that is a recipe for Cease and Desist letters.
All I'm saying is that we should be 'economically rational' and put our weight behind communities that will not come back to squash us.
Bill
As you rightly note: "Rod has not come after me or anyone I've heard of with Cease and Desist letters) about it but that is only because the VC's just got their hooks into him."
We are not JBoss. We have not taken the same aggressive approach to other companies and individuals and have no intention to do so. JBoss had a history of aggression before raising funding; we have always taken a different approach. We're also ASL, unless JBoss (an important distinction).
I think my track record also proves that I'm not likely to be a VC's puppet. Marc Fleury was the same man before and after funding. So am I. And Marc and I are very different :-)
My views on the flaws in the pure "aggregator" model (which takes but does not give) long predate us taking funding. For example, I wrote the following blog over 6 months before we raised money: http://blog.interface21.com/main/2006/10/28/oracle-open-source-and-commodization/
I am proud that Spring is a great piece of software that advanced the art (and continues to do so) and has a strong community. Guess what; we couldn't have done it without the goal of a sustainable business.
I do think the "free software" idea is naive, at least in the enterprise space.
Rgds
Rod
Posted by Rod Johnson on September 22, 2007 at 10:44 AM MDT #
Hey Rod,
Thanks for the comment. I know you are not MF and I also know you guys have taken a much more community friendly stance. But over time I think it will be hard for you to continue in that. Not because you don't want to but as I understand copyrights you have to defend them or you will loose the right to keep them.
And let me say again that Spring is a great technology and its saved my rear end several times. I really like it.
I don't know if 'free software' is naive in the enterprise space. I do agree that if I saw something that really needed to be done and I built it in my basement on my spare time its unlikely to be robust enough to be used in the enterprise space. The way that I would prefer to have things go though is that several contributing companies come on board so that the tech is not controlled by just be but is instead controlled by the community. That does work, tomcat, apache httpd, eclipse jdt, etc etc.
The 'aggregators' could give back (and do) in projects that are not owned by one company. Bug fixes and patches, answering questions on email lists and even providing committers if they are allowed to.
Posted by Bill Dudney on September 22, 2007 at 09:03 PM MDT #
Bill
You write that "The 'aggregators' could give back (and do) in projects that are not owned by one company. Bug fixes and patches, answering questions on email lists and even providing committers if they are allowed to."
My issue is that aggregators have never tried to give back with respect to Spring (and numerous other projects). It's not that we have prevented them contributing (there are non-I21 committers on Spring). Commit rights on Spring are granted on merit, not employment status. No aggregator has provided patches, given meaningful help to users or attempted to contribute. They've had years to do so and have not. Which is what irks me. (Btw BEA, Oracle and IBM have each contributed more to Spring than any of the aggregators, with their deep love of open source.)
Interface21 is a company founded by deep techies, and is responsible for producing a huge amount of top quality open source. It only took VC funding to get to the next level after establishing a solid business over almost 3 years. Most of that funding is going into a huge increase in our already large investment into developing the Spring Portfolio. Hopefully that will help it save your rear end many more times :-)
The aggregators AFAIK were VC funded from the get-go and are focused at the checkout end of the business, not the value creation.
Who is doing the most for open source and open source communities here?
Rgds
Rod
Posted by Rod Johnson on September 23, 2007 at 12:33 PM MDT #
Having contributed a non-trivial amount of patches for quite embarrassing bugs in "Spring-Core" over the last couple of years I really disagree with Rod.
All patches, from the substantial and complex to the extremely trivial, are consistently rewritten without need. Even those of us crazy enough to contribute our own time and efforts are actively discouraged from "touching" the source.
"We encourage feature requests, not code contributions" seems to be the party line.
Posted by No One In Particular on September 24, 2007 at 02:35 PM MDT #
No One In Particular, I'm not sure why you can't identify yourself. Maybe we can then look at the JIRA issues involved.
Posted by 76.216.18.122 on September 24, 2007 at 05:02 PM MDT #
Thanks for taking a look at my entry, Bill.
I stand close to Bill, I think, in that I want open source endeavors to be based on a community of users and developers. The Spring community has an active and passionate userbase in forums and JIRA, but there aren't many people who have committer access that don't work for i21. That doesn't make the software less valuable in and of itself, but in tying the fortunes of the community to those of the company, the users must shoulder the risks of both. I've never cared for that approach (my ASF and FSF colors shining brightly again).
Posted by Ben Speakmon on September 24, 2007 at 05:13 PM MDT #
"No One In Particular, I'm not sure why you can't identify yourself. Maybe we can then look at the JIRA issues involved." - Inadvertently forgot to enter my name... Did not mean to conceal my identity :-)
Posted by Rod Johnson on September 24, 2007 at 06:18 PM MDT #
Rod,
I'm not having a problem with particular issues - most stuff is fixed in a reasonable timeframe, at least when Juergen gets involved :)
I am (and was) referring to your comment: "there are non-I21 committers on Spring".
I don't see any in the CVS logs (unless you're talking about some side project like Spring-OSGI).
In addition, the "spring-dev" mailing list (which used to have interesting discussions about new features and implementation strategies) is a spam wasteland now.
New features seem not to come from outside feedback - the new annotation-driven configuration seems a good example of something no one was really waiting for.
There's nothing wrong with spring now being 'walled garden opensource'. But at least be clear/honest about it.
Cheers.
Posted by No One In Particular on September 25, 2007 at 05:39 AM MDT #