Standing in the Field @ Valley Forge

Standing in the Field

Notes from SJS Application Server Field Engineering

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Friday May 20, 2005
White Hats

Roughly four years ago, Scott McNealy addressed a group of iPlanet employees, including myself. This was in the middle of the dot com boom, and there were still a lot of questions about what direction the internet was going to take. At the end of his speech, Scott commented that there were a lot of companies trying to make the web proprietary and trying to lock customers into proprietary solutions. He said that Sun was in a battle to keep the network open and to develop solutions that favored customers and not vendors. The last part I remember exactly. He said, "isn't it nice to be working for the company wearing the white hat."*

That has always been important to me. It has been nice to be working for the company in the white hat. Sun has had its ups and down since then and so has its stock price. I've been re-org'd more times than I care to count. But Sun has never wavered from its commitment to openness, to its customers, and to operating with integrity.

There are lots of companies out there that claim to be open. But most of them are just interested in how they can make money from the open source contributions of others. A lot of companies "talk the talk, but don't walk the walk" when it comes to contributing to the commons. Executive management at Sun may not have always been effective at "talking the talk", but Sun has always "walked the walk" about open source and open platforms.

However, the time has come for me to leave Sun.

After working with Java since version 1.1 and J2EE from the very beginning, it's time for me to move up the software stack. I've accepted a position with Fuego, a leader in the exciting market of BPM software (business process management). I see in Fuego the same commitment to customers, to innovation, and to openness. And I believe that BPM software will be the key to making Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) a reality. BPM is the glue that will make everything (people/processes/systems/services) work together.

Anyway, thanks to all of those of you who have read my blog or had me come to your company. You can now find me blogging at BPM Blog. ( RSS feed ) My first couple of posts will be about why I've made this move and why I think that people who are interested in J2EE should be learning about BPM. (I promise I'll be better at keep the blog updated. I have a lot of plane rides ahead of me: lots of time to be writing blog posts. :-) )

Thanks again for reading and I hope to see you at BPM Blog. (If you have trouble connecting today, the DNS may not have propogated to you yet. Try again tomorrow.)

David

*For those non-US readers not familiar with the expression "white hat", old western movies stereotypically had the good characters wearing white cowboy hats and the villains wearing black hats.

(2005-05-20 10:44:57.0) Permalink Comments [1]


Friday May 13, 2005
The JBoss Killer

So everyone is calling IBM's acquisition of Gluecode a move to create a "JBoss killer". Gluecode is a very small company that provides an integrated application server suite around the Apache Geronimo application server, some other related Apache projects, and some management and monitoring tools.

Since there have been rumors of IBM trying to create an open source implementation of J2SE, it's entirely reasonable that IBM would want an open source application server to go with their J2SE implementation. All in all, I find the acquisition interesting, but not earth shattering. Geronimo and the other Apache projects have existed for some time now and I don't think that IBM's acquisition of Gluecode really changes the industry that much.

But Marc Fleury, Founder/Chairman/CEO of JBoss, is his usual acerbic self. (Fleury was the one who called the Apache Foundation “a bunch of fat ladies drinking tea” and who got caught "astroturfing" TheServerSide.)

Like Rich, I can't follow Marc's argument about why this acquisition is bad for Sun. Sun would love to see an open source implementation of J2EE that is more than grudgingly J2EE certified. (When Marc spoke at my JUG he complained at length about what a waste of time the J2EE certification is.) And with a couple million downloads of Sun Application Server, I'm not sure that Sun has to worry about Gluecode suddenly becoming a volume play that takes Sun out of the picture. All things considered, IBM has been a good friend to Java and I can't see IBM making an investment in open source as any kind of threat to the integrity of the Java Community Process.

(2005-05-13 20:21:10.0) Permalink Comments [1]


Sunday May 08, 2005
Open Letter
Mask art

Sun has a very colorful past when it comes to open letters. We write them. We receive them. The press has a field day talking about them.

So, given the fact that "Standing in the Field" gets a reasonable amount of traffic from the publicity of blogs.sun.com, I'd like to continue this Sun tradition of open letters.

To:
Jane Ogren
janeogren.com
Dear Mom:
I wanted to take advantage of this public space to tell you how much I love you and I how proud I am to be your son.
I am proud of the values you have instilled in me. I am even more proud that you were able to instill those values so subtly while still allowing me to pick my own paths and make my own mistakes. Growing up I always thought I took after Dad. But as an adult I see how much of you there is in me.
I am proud of your art. I am proud of all of your work: as a mom, as a teacher, as an artist, as a volunteer, and as a citizen.
Thank you for continuing to teach me things as an adult. Thanks for listening to me. Thank you for being an example I can be proud of. Thank you for always being there for me.
In the end, the results speak for themselves. Your children love you and we've both managed to be happy and well adjusted. Our family has a deep bond. We may live further away that you like, but we always feel you near.
Happy Mother's Day. You are the best Mom ever.
Love,

David
(2005-05-08 07:58:52.0) Permalink