ZFS has just been incorporated to the FreeBSD code base ([1], [2]). And it has been previously reported that ZFS will be in Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) ([1], [2]). These are good signs for ZFS. In the world of Open Source, adoption of a technology by an outside community or project is a clear indicator of technical excellence (although not always - sometimes licensing and other issues get in the way). Closer to home, I see clear technical excellence in the large adoption of the JAXB RI (JBoss, TmaxSoft, Geronimo, WebLogic Server, Jonas, many others) and the increased adoption of the JAX-WS RI (WebLogic Server, TmaxSoft) and Grizzly (Jetty).

There are other GlassFish modules that have noticeable outside adoption including JSF, JSP and TopLinkEssentials. Projects like jMaki and Phobos are generating a lot of buzz but, to my knowledge, are not yet incorporated into outside projects. GlassFish, in toto, is also being adopted: it is included in several OpenSolaris distributions and in Ubuntu, and also in NetBeans (we are very open to expanding that list with additional distributions; if you are interested, just contact us).

I hope that, over time, we will have more and more adoption of GlassFish projects. And, where appropriate, we may end up adopting external projects and resist the NIH syndrome; our goal is technical excellence for the users of GlassFish.

Note: When I have a moment I'll add links to the above assertions; in the meantime just do a search at TheAquarium.

One of the traditional benefits of an Open Source Project is that of additional ports. Rogelio has been using the Mac port of GlassFish on FreeBSD with success. Now Homer provides Very Detailed Instructions on How to Build GlassFish specifically for FreeBSD. Check out the live result here. The instructions should be useful to people attemping to do other ports and, if you try that, please let us know.

Rogelio has kicked the tires on GlassFish on FreeBSD and it passed a couple of simple tests ([1], [2]). We had an internal discussion about FreeBSD just before JavaOne and it looked like it should pretty much work except perhaps regarding the conversion of certificates between the NSS keystore format and the JDK keystore format. FreeBSD is not a supported configuration, but drop us an email if you are interested.