Running Commentary

I've been following coverage of our recent Java announcement (of course), but was also interested to read comments from Marc Fleury (SVP and GM of Red Hat's Jboss division) on the ongoing RedHat/JBoss integration. According to Enterprise Open Source Magazine, Marc:

“... recently expressed frustration at Red Hat's continuing lack of investment in JBoss's ongoing R&D...'the R&D really hasn't benefited from a huge investment, which I was hoping for and was the main reason I went to Red Hat.'”

I suggested about a month ago that JBoss developers and users may want to check out the combination of Sun Java Application Platform Suite, Solaris, the Sun Studio developer tools, and the Apache Derby Java DB. On the open-source side, there's the GlassFish project and NetBeans with the Sun-supported Java DB.

Fleury also talked with Java World about Sun's Java announcement and the reaction from IBM:

“IBM reacted negatively to the Sun announcement,” he said, “because IBM's approach to open source is what we call 'strip mining,' which is to let the open source community do things, then IBM comes and packages them, and adds proprietary code, and markets the result—witness WebSphere. So they have this dual strategy of proprietary products and low-end open source.” This kind of strategy “usually works well with BSD-style licences,” he says, “where you can create, as a vendor, a competing offering that is proprietary.” Sun's action in releasing Java under the GPL had “pre-empted the efforts that IBM was making with Harmony and Apache in trying to create an open source release under BSD-style licenses and has taken the wind out of their sails.”

“I was a little bit disappointed with IBM's reaction,” Fleury says, “because they showed their 'strip mining' strategy hand a little too well. Before, they were all 'open source is good, open source is fine.' So you mean free software is not good. Why?” The GPL means that that Java “will remain in the free software community forever. You can't take it away. That's the advantage of the Free Software Foundation licenses, and they (IBM) are against that. Why? They've been crying wolf on 'you have to open source,' and when Sun calls their bluff and goes GPL, they're not happy.”

But I thought reporter Matthew Newton of PC World summed up the meaning of our Java announcement well:

"When you give builders new tools, better tools, and more powerful tools, they can build more stuff, they can build it faster, and they can build it more effectively. The net effects of Sun's move with Java cannot yet be seen. But mark my words: When we take another look at Free desktops two or three years from now, we'll be able to point to all kinds of things and say, "See, we wouldn't have this today if Java weren't free."

Other links:

China's Green Tech Boom
Looks like our Eco-Responsibility initiative is in line with China's pledge to use solar, wind and other renewable energy sources for 20% of their power needs by 2020. They might take a look at how we're reducing server energy consumption and increasing space efficiency by 33% as well as tripling performance compared to competitor's systems. I know I've said this before, but knowing that we're actually conscious of how we're impacting the environment is a huge side-benefit to working for this company.

YouTube, Verizon Announce Video Deal
This is just the beginning of what we'll be seeing with more services available on mobile handsets and devices.

SCO Having a Hard Time in Court
What happens when companies make unsupported claims and allegations. And, it doesn't look like it's over just yet.

Salesforce.com integrates to get ahead
Collaboration and compatibility appears to be the more fruitful route yet again.

Posted at 08:30AM Dec 04, 2006 by Peder Ulander in Sun  |