Oracle buying JBoss? Who cares?
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;
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.
Please do post more. I can't for the life of me figure out what you would have against the JBoss Professional Open Source model. The people who write the code have a chance to get a paycheck and do it full time - not just on the weekends. We get to continue to create true open source software (not dual license or any half and half). The customers who need support get it, so they can use open source in places where they might not have otherwise been able to. It's a win for everyone involved. So please do tell - what's so offensive about the JBoss business model?
Posted by Norman Richards on February 10, 2006 at 12:47 PM MST #
First off, guess your definition of open source is different from the one I use (http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php).
Secondly, JBoss welcomes contributors from the community. I would love to get some more help on JBoss Remoting if you're interested (and can code). Just hired my only other contributor since he made great contributions and was happy with our offer.
Posted by Tom Elrod on February 10, 2006 at 03:05 PM MST #
I couldn't get my whole comment in here without it all bleeding into one long blob of text since HTML formating is off, so I put it on my blog site:
http://sams-rants.blogspot.com/
Posted by Sam Griffith Jr. on February 11, 2006 at 09:29 PM MST #
Hmmm... I can't speak for Bill but I can tell why I think the JBoss "model" has issues. First of all, I think they are "mostly right" in the no half/half (pro editions) or viral GPL/dual licensing. Companies are monetizing on these models all the time and I won't defend or promote them. I personally like the 100% open source with support and services.
So what's wrong with JBoss? It's created a dictatorship around the JBoss open source code such that it's will dictates to the community. They can claim their community extends beyond their own company but is this really the case? Are individual contributors(ie, non Jboss employees) able to make decisions about core, central architecture? Are contributors allowed to "assimilate" their contributions into JBoss platform "on their terms?"
JBoss appears (just my opinions) heavy handed, dictatorial, and arrogant. This is based on about zero interaction with them directly, just observing them with the technology community. Instead of being a good natured aggregator of the amazing work of developers on smaller, independent, useful outside of JBoss projects, they bought up the developers and branded their projects JBoss.
JBoss and Oracle make a good match. They both acquire other projects to centralize control (ie, one product does 100 things as long as it's done our way). MSFT does this exceptionally well too.
I guess it's if you think this is a good thing or not.
Money DEF is Good... I believe people making money on open source is a very good thing:
http://www.bayontechnologies.com/bt/blog/archives/2006/01/great_post_on_c.php
Posted by Nicholas Goodman on February 12, 2006 at 11:50 AM MST #