Shreedhar' s Weblog

Our Free Software Strategy: Some useful pointers

Some responses from writers in the media, to our Free Software strategy announcement, indicated a poor grasp of what just happened. What I don't get is the accompanying misguided remarks such as "poorly architected application server" without sufficient factual data backing up, and misinterpretations such as "giving up revenue", and "goodbye revenue". To address the application server related remark, our own Rich Sharples explains it with aplomb here . Sun's free Application Server 8.1 PE version provides the best price/performance (per our SPECjAppserver submission) and administration features. We have a vibrant community developing for the GlassFish Project, the open source application server starting with version 9.0. Look here The GlassFish Project.

Here are a couple of good analyses, from a well grounded writer, Paula Rooney, on CRN.com :

here and here.

Put very simply, our software stack through JES was earlier available for free as a 90 day evaluation, and now it is available for free forever. Up until now, customers signed up on our subscription program for support of various forms. That does not change. What this strategy does is, as I indicated in my previous blog, make this production quality software stack more accessible to Developers, and Small and Medium Businesses. And as Jonathan points out in his blog here:

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Sun doesn't have a single customer, worldwide, that will run an unsupported product in their datacenter

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Posted at 10:58AM Dec 03, 2005 by Shreedhar Ganapathy in General  |  Comments[1]