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Java Programming Businesses

Oracle to buy JBoss (and others) 162

Posted by Zonk from the offset-by-the-layoffs-i'm-sure dept.
tfritsch writes "According to a story at News.com it looks like Oracle's shopping spree is to continue. The JBoss acquisition could be big - what does it mean for the future of the JBoss Application Server?" From the article: "Oracle makes the majority of its revenue from its database and applications business. And it has its own line of Java middleware, which competes with JBoss' software, and a set of Java developer tools. However, Oracle has been warming up to open-source products, including Zend's PHP development tools, over the past year because its corporate customers are increasingly using open source software, according to company executives. "
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Oracle to buy JBoss (and others) More

Oracle to buy JBoss (and others)

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  • Wow (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cosmotron ( 900510 ) on Friday February 10, 2006 @12:07PM (#14688389) Journal
    They lay people off to buy JBoss.

    • Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)

      by tgd ( 2822 ) on Friday February 10, 2006 @12:22PM (#14688529)
      A least that means lots of people who can contribute to JBoss now, in their free time.

    • Re:Wow (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 10, 2006 @12:56PM (#14688829)
      I hope I don't get laid off. I work for JBoss in their Astroturfing Dept.
    • You know, I was just about to say that. Damn, what a bunch of fucktards. I can understand if they lay people off and then merge with a company or get bought out - but to buy another product? How irresponsible. As I said to a friend of mine last week - in this day and age employees are treated like liabilities not assets. As the saying goes "If you are not in sales, then you're overhead"

      • Re:Wow (Score:2)

        by mnmn ( 145599 )
        Why do you think a company has any other responsibilities to the employee than what is legal and contracted?

        Welcome to the dark side of capitalism. In a free market everyone is out to make as much money as possible... legally. Unless theres a law that forces companies to keep employees until it goes bankrupt, employees will be treated as commodity, which they are in a capital market. I dont think Oracle is doing anything 'wrong'.

        • Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 )
          I think Oracle is doing something 'wrong'. I just don't think they're doing anything illegal - which has nothing to do with right and wrong, just what is or isn't convenient for society and the Powers That Be(tm).
        • Why do you think a company has any other responsibilities to the employee than what is legal and contracted?
          And yet, we do not have the same acceptance of employees whose goal is to take home the biggest salary for the least possible amount of work.

          What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

        • Because these 'tard companies always bitch about employees not being loyal to the company - except the employees are not loyal because they want to change jobs every 2-3 years, they are not loyal because companies treat them like dogshit. They give medeiocre raises (cost of living sound familiar), work their employees insane hours, not much in the way of appreciation (actually money is the only real form of appreciation imho) oh and the CEOs are still raking in MILLIONS/year! Defend the corporates all you

      • Re:Wow (Score:2, Informative)

        by Noressa ( 953475 )
        That's more or less true. At Oracle, we were told that if it could be written out, automated and formulated it would be sent overseas. This is before the big merges started to actually come together. Now, not only do you have to worry about your job being redundant which is a contributing factor, you have to also hope that it requires your presense in the states. On the bright side, those getting let go of right now should have an easier time finding a job in the current climate then those a couple year
        • I never mentioned legalities, where did this come up (someone else mentioned it). I know they are not doing anything illegal.

      • Re:Wow (Score:2, Interesting)

        by millermp ( 778586 )
        Did you even read why they laid off 2000 people? That was because of a merger with another company. They were duplicate jobs due to overlap of the merger with Siebel, not so they can save some money to buy JBoss.
      • Some employees are liabilities.

        For some, it's because they were never good employees. For others, they were once needed and now they do not produce a net positive.

        On this planet, being hard working or loyal or nice is not -- by itself -- a guarantee that others owe you something. You need to be hard at work doing something useful. Otherwise you are a liability.
        • I hate to tell you this, but in this day and age (and for many years) ALL employees who are not generating direct revenue are liabilities. As a non-revenue generating employee you are nothing but a cost-of-doing business. You may be an invaluable liability - with a skill that few have or can outperform, but you are still a liability. Any other thinking is just plain wrong and wishful thinking on your part.

  • figures (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    being as guy running jboss was the former vice president of most of oracle's app server development team (bluestone/hp), this is kind of a funny and somewhat welcome suprise.

  • Not gonna happen. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by md17 ( 68506 ) * <james@james[ ]d.org ['war' in gap]> on Friday February 10, 2006 @12:09PM (#14688409) Homepage
    Since JBoss is private, Marc would have to be willing to sell JBoss to Larry. Larry can't just write a check, get regulatory approval and be done. There is no way Marc will sell his baby... I think he is much more interested in JBoss someday being bigger than IBM & Oracle. The world is moving toward software as a service. JBoss is positioned to be the king of that world. Marc knows this. 10 years down the road, no one will be paying for enterprise software licenses. Marc sees this and won't let even $400 million get in the way of JBoss being king of that world. I probably sound like a Marc loving lunatic. But we have to be honest. Marc created a virus that's exponentially eating away at Oracle, IBM, etc's business models. That virus can only be stopped if Marc sells. I've seen the smile on his face when he talks about the virus he created. By the time JBoss is public and purchasable by Larry, even Larry won't be able to afford it.

    (Reposted from my comment on Javalobby [javalobby.org])

    • Re:Not gonna happen. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <namtabmiaka>> on Friday February 10, 2006 @12:11PM (#14688434) Homepage Journal
      Larry can't just write a check, get regulatory approval and be done. There is no way Marc will sell his baby...

      You might be amazed at how much power is contained within a single zero. Throw enough of them on the check, and even Marc would have a hard time resisting.

    • Re:Not gonna happen. (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I probably sound like a Marc loving lunatic.

      No probably about it. Yeesh, you sound like a first-name-dropping-steve-jobs-worshipping-sad-nol ife-mac-fanboy.

      Its not pretty - I suggest you seek help while you can.

    • Re:Not gonna happen. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by catch23 ( 97972 ) on Friday February 10, 2006 @12:25PM (#14688558)
      I really really hope JBoss does not sell themselves to Oracle. I've hated most of Oracle's java products and really hate to see JBoss turn into another horrible product. I for one, really enjoy developing on JBoss products.

      Doesn't Oracle already have an application server they bought long time ago? I thought they had bought the Orion server and turned it into their own. I used OrionServer back when it was actually good. The main software developers hung out in the #Java channel on efnet so it was really easy to stop by there and fire off a question or two. Nowadays, I'd have to pay $50,000 to Oracle just for some support help.

    • Re:Not gonna happen. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      > The world is moving toward software as a service. JBoss is positioned to be the king of that world.

      How so? Marc's stunning business acumen? They have a piddling little consulting service, and it's not like their app server doesn't have credible competition from the likes of IBM and Bea.

    • 10 years down the road, no one will be paying for enterprise software licenses.

      This is absurd on the face of it, and then upon reflection somewhat meaningless. So you don't buy a license; instead you pay a quarterly subscription fee. So basically instead of upgrading once a year you pay four times a year. What's the real difference?

      Marc created a virus that's exponentially eating away at Oracle, IBM, etc's business models. That virus can only be stopped if Marc sells. I've seen the smile on his face wh

      • "Does that sound like a company whose business model doesn't work?"

        That remains to be seen. What it sounds like at the moment is a company with too much money on its hands who thinks aquistions will "fix" everything...

    • Re:Not gonna happen. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mbowen ( 943330 )
      How do you get bigger than IBM and Oracle with JBoss? Simply because it's technically superior? You have to have superior sales and marketing to be a superior product, and only products make money - not technologies. JBoss needs to compete in the marketplace and it won't do so just because it was made by some cool guy named Marc. One day all of you open-source weenies are going to realize that the world doesn't run on GPL.
      • One day all of you open-source weenies are going to realize that the world doesn't run on GPL.

        I might have given you a bit of respect until you threw out the trolling line. Also, a lot of the internet does run on GPL'd and open source software in case you hadn't noticed. Let me run a couple names by you by way of example; Apache, PHP, Sendmail, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Linux, *BSD, Firefox. You may also consider many of the embedded Linux routers/modems that are in use (one of which you are probably using to ac
    • I note in TFA that JBoss is unprofitable. So Marc might sell because he doesn't want to put anymore money into it.
      If it takes the 10 years you are talking about, where is he going to get the investors?

      It reminds me of a joke about a Vermont farmer who wins $1 millon in the lottery.
      When asked what he will do, he says:

      "Well I guess I'll keep farming until the money runs out."

      If you are losing money, you can't keep paying the developers forever.

      With J2EE, every year or two there is a new version of the standa
    • Well, I talked to Frank last night, and he said there is no way that Joe would agree to this. Jim and Fran might, maybe even Bob, not no, not Joe.

    • Re:Not gonna happen. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Doctor Memory ( 6336 ) on Friday February 10, 2006 @03:55PM (#14690090)
      Not gonna happen. You know why? Because of Marc, Gavin King and their pet toad Bill Burke. When I think Weblogic, I think quality software. When I think of Websphere, I think Tomcat with a load of cruft bolted to every exposed surface. When I think of JBoss, I think arrogant poseurs with an app server. Face it, JBoss is more about the players than the product, and that's never going to cut it in the Real World. They've done remarkably well, but they're basically a fly buzzing around the real players. And, like a fly, if they ever become too annoying, they'll get swatted. Or maybe this is what Oracle is doing, setting out a pretty sundew [omnisterra.com] plant...

  • Note to JBoss administrative support employees (Score:3, Funny)

    by RingDev ( 879105 ) on Friday February 10, 2006 @12:09PM (#14688410) Homepage Journal
    Brush up your resume.

    -Rick
    • That'd be one of the scariest two sentences to hear in concurrence: "That company that just axed 2000 employees? They just bought us."

  • Don't trust Oracle (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <namtabmiaka>> on Friday February 10, 2006 @12:09PM (#14688412) Homepage Journal
    Don't believe for a minute that Oracle would purchase JBoss to "help it shift customers to a subscriber-based model". Oracle already has a superior J2EE server based on Orion [orionserver.com] technology. Far more likely is that Oracle wants to pull another PeopleSoft aquisition. They'll buy up JBoss, kill the company, then let the product die on the vine. All while pushing how "Open Source Friendly" they've become.

    • Re:Don't trust Oracle (Score:3, Interesting)

      by brennz ( 715237 )
      Killing off the leading product in a high growth market is bad business. It doesn't appear logical.

      I think people are misunderstanding the software subscription market too, and how vastly profitable it can be.

      • Re:Don't trust Oracle (Score:4, Insightful)

        by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <namtabmiaka>> on Friday February 10, 2006 @01:02PM (#14688891) Homepage Journal
        Killing off the leading product in a high growth market is bad business. It doesn't appear logical.

        1. JBoss is not the leading product in the J2EE market. It's a competitor, but nowhere near the top.

        2. J2EE servers are not a high growth market. In fact, the market is oversaturated at this point, with servers from BEA, Sun, IBM, Novell, JBoss, Apache, Macromedia, ObjectWeb, Pramati, Borland, Orion, Oracle, Caucho, Apple (!), ATG, Compaq/HP, Fujitsu, Gemstone, Hitachi, IONA, Secant, Sybase, and quite a few others who aren't worth mentioning. Of those, Apache and ObjectWeb directly compete with JBoss to provide an open source J2EE server. Nearly the entire market competes with JBoss for support contracts.
        • I think you misread my comments to be a straight comparison of JBoss to other java application server servers, instead of JBoss as the leading OSS application server, in competition with other OSS java application servers. The point of this article is an Oracle grab at key OSS apps leading to a complete Oracle stack.

          JBoss is the leading open source java app server

          OSS Java app servers with low/null acquisition costs are a high growth market. All those companies going to OSS with other parts of their stack,
          • JBoss is the leading open source java app server

            That's a of qualifiers. The question is: Do they mean anything?

            I can unequivolcally state that I am the leading Slashdot poster with Batman in my name. That statement doesn't generate revenue or otherwise help me in any useful way.

            OSS Java app servers with low/null acquisition costs are a high growth market.

            According to who? I have observed no real push by the market to move from their expensive servers to OSS servers. There is a push for cheaper servers like
            • "...I'm afraid that the massive, OSS, J2EE market simply doesn't exist."

              Not to mention that most people seem to be staying away from J2EE anyway and using lightweight beans and tools like Spring, Hibernate, and Velocity.

              For many problems, using J2EE is like using a 12-pound sledge-hammer to pound a tack into the wall. And if you do happen to have those kinds of problems, chances are you're big enough to want and be able to pay for a stable, commercial solution.

              • Spring and Hibernate, yes. Struts, yes. Velocity is not widely used.

                And let's also note that it's not about "no J2EE", it's about "no EJB 2.x". Java EE consists of many important frameworks: Servlets, JSP & JSTL, the WAR/EAR deployment model, JMS, JCA, JTA, the various JAX api's, etc.
            • I can unequivolcally state that I am the leading Slashdot poster with Batman in my name. That statement doesn't generate revenue or otherwise help me in any useful way.

              This is something I wish more people understood. Being the "leader" doesn't really mean much for business unless it gives you power of some sort. That power is either influence or money.

              The Linux Kernel team and Apache Foundation, for example, have power through influence. Redhat, on the other hand, arguably has power because of its posit
              • JBoss has neither revenue nor major influence. Most uses of open source J2EE only require a servlet container, which JBoss doesn't provide!

                Precisely! Although I will point out that JBoss does have some value in their name. The name was partly gained through jumping off another name (Rickard, one of the earliest EJB experts) and partly through a lot of theatrics performed by Fleury. That name has some value, but probably not 200 million worth.

                It's too bad they lost Rickard or they might at least have technol
            • According to who? I have observed no real push by the market to move from their expensive servers to OSS servers.

              Then you're not observing very carefully. I can think of at least one large company who has done this just off the top of my head.

              Vodafone have moved all the J2EE-based middleware to JBoss from (I think it was mostly Weblogic?) across the board, across the world.

              The company I currently work for, an EFTPOS technology provider, have just done the same with their product as well.
        • 1. OAS is not the leading product in the J2EE market either, and I would guess it's actually less popular than JBoss.

          2. Total agreement about the oversaturation. IBM seems to be the dominant player all the same, however, and look what they're just starting to do after having bought Gluecode (a company that was putting out an easy-to-use install of the open-source Apache Geronimo): release it as "Websphere Community Edition", boosting their brand awareness at little cost to the company, and gearing up to pr
        • 1. JBoss is not the leading product in the J2EE market. It's a competitor, but nowhere near the top.

          You might want to check your facts [onjava.com] before posting this kind of FUD.
          • You might want to check your facts before posting this kind of FUD.

            $#%@!!!! You post a WEB SURVEY and the have the gall to accuse me of spreading FUD?! Good God, you are either truly naive about all things statistical, or you're trying to spread quite a bit of FUD yourself.

            IDC: IBM takes lead from BEA [serverpipeline.com]
            Gartner: IBM trumps BEA [crn.com]

            You don't by any chance work for JBoss's Astroturfing department, do you? Hmmm... very suspicious... :-P
            • Haha. Nice try. Do you have anything published more recently?
              • Do you have anything that isn't a websurvey? Otherwise mine is at least a real study done within the last year as opposed to "proving" that the users of a specific website really like JBoss. I'd be happy to entertain anything better if you've got it.

                Posting web surveys as evidence is always trolling. Period, end of story.
      • Yes, but Oracle has the same problem that Microsoft has - one that IBM does not have. When IBM embraced Linux, it had a software business, but that was dwarfed by their hardware and (even at the outset of it's Linux shift) consulting businesses.

        Oracle knows it need to make this shift, but its consulting businesses are not as well developed as IBM's, and it does not have the deep research arm that IBM does to create and sell things like "organizational optimization software" or UIMA. Oracle's core product
        • ...it will get eaten when Google or someone else finally manages to get a viable browser office suite (also a year or two out and moving steadily)

          Moving steadily indeed. It's been a year or two out for at least five years now.
          • While I agree there's plenty of vapor around this stuff, there are some real functioning, if limited AJAX office suites out now (e.g. Zoho Writer). Not saying it will out and out obsolete Vista, but there really are some changes about to happen.

  • Oracle Visions (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 )
    Anyone out there using Oracle's OID to do LDAP, and their servlet container, in a single app? Anyone using OID + JBoss? Any idea how that app could be improved by integration inside Oracle?

    Know any docs on switching existing LDAP/servlet installations to Oracle with OID, to prepare for Oracle's apparently increased servlet support?
  • ....right here [postgresql.org] had an interesting comment from Bruce Momjian:
    It is interesting that they are purchasing companies that almost fully control the software but give it away free as open source: Sleepycat, JBoss, and Zend. Oracle's purchase months ago of InnoDB used by MySQL was a similar move. What they are _not_ getting involved in is software that is community controlled, like PostgreSQL or Linux, because it much harder to see how a purchase would allow tight control of the software, resulting in revenue.
    Rather well said.

    I've been pleased with Oracle's JDeveloper; writing an extension [blogs.com] for it has been interesting and the Oracle folks have been quite helpful.
    • It would be quite hard to buy anything about linux. There is no company there. You could buy some distro, but its rather in Oracle's interest to let them free and compete. That does not mean that Oracle is not involved in Linux. There is a group of engineers at Oracle lead by Wim who do basically only that as their main goal. Just recently they got ocfs2 into the kernel and they are fixing bugs and providing patches back to both distros and kernel directly for quite a few years now. There is a plenty of oth
    • Yup - the InnoDB engine is developed by a commercial company, but open sourced (and licensed by MySQL). InnoDB is the engine that makes MySQL viable in for commercial usage. Without it, MySQL would have a bit of a tough time (though they could continue to develope the InnoDB engine).

      Postgres is purely open source, and it's a great database, though I don't find it quite as intuitive as MySQL (coming from an Oracle background).

      I don't quite know what they could purchase for Postgres or Linux, other than compa
    • that is not a very intelligent comment from Bruce.

      Jboss is under LGPL. So from the free-as-in-freedom point of view it is much more "community controlled" than others mentioned.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday February 10, 2006 @12:15PM (#14688466)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Fork off the companies? (Score:3, Informative)

      by kherr ( 602366 )
      Am I now going to have to start assuming that any decent OSS/FS project will eventually sell out?

      Maybe this is just the way of business, who knows. People do want to make money, even from their labors of love. But the question I pose is simple: can't the "sell-out" software simply fork at the point of the acquisition? It's not like you can put open source software back in the can. All you can do is restrict it going forward.

      Let's take JBoss as an example. What's to prevent JBoss developers (or anyone) from
      • Nothing at all.

        But most companies will stick with the "official" JBoss, plus the Oracle name will attract Oracle fans. As long as it stays free, any new users will opt for the more popular "official" JBoss... turning the well-meaning JHonco into JUnemployeed.
      • I've always been partial to the name "Jefe" for the JBoss fork. It's got the "J", the "boss/controller" semantic, and there's a number of hysterical movie references to work with :

        "Would you say I have a plethora of EJB's Jefe?"
        "Oh yes, El Guapo, you have a plethora."
        "Do you know what a plethora is Jefe?" ...

        Regards,
        Ross
      • How about assuming that the people doing this aren't complete and total idiots. How about asking yourself, instead, what you would do if you were about to "buy" an OSS project?

        How about, for starters, hiring the top 5 developers? (To be fair, you did mention that.) So, how about making the key people sign a non-compete contract as a condition to their becoming millionaires?

        People who are about to spend a lot of money on something generally want to know that they're getting something for their dollars.

    • It seems to me the latest trend is traditional software companies buying up the smaller firms that control notable OSS solutions.

      JBoss, Zend, MySQL, BerkeleyDB all fit into this category.

      As pointed out by tcopeland quoting Bruce Momjian, "What they are _not_ getting involved in is software that is community controlled, like PostgreSQL or Linux, because it much harder to see how a purchase would allow tight control of the software, resulting in revenue."

      OSS that fits more into the category of community contr
    • Am I now going to have to start assuming that any decent OSS/FS project will eventually sell out?

      And this is why we have the GPL :)
    • It seems to me like most OSS projects reach a state where almost all of the code is written by people employed to do so. This is because it becomes advantageous for businesses to make sure that the projects don't get abandoned, and developers who are doing it as a full-time job just spend more time writing code for the project than other people do. What probably matters more is whether everybody is employed by the same business. The ideal situation is something like Linux, where lots of companies which use

  • Hey! (Score:3, Funny)

    by airrage ( 514164 ) on Friday February 10, 2006 @12:24PM (#14688548) Homepage Journal
    Hey Oracle the 90's called they want their bubble back.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday February 10, 2006 @12:31PM (#14688602)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • And we all remember the last time a company went out and bought up a bunch of companies trying to hack together a bigger brand and comprehensive product lineup, rather than take the time to properly acquire and integrate their product lines...

      Yeah, they're called Microsoft, and it seems to be working pretty well for them.

  • Oracle and its security record (Score:3, Informative)

    by A beautiful mind ( 821714 ) on Friday February 10, 2006 @12:32PM (#14688604)
    Oracle is a quite good company producing quality database applications.

    The problem with them? They don't give a rat's ass about security. 600+, 800+ days of unfixed exploits? Who cares! Their security track record is much worse than that of Microsoft's.

    The people who fork out a lot of cash to Oracle could rightfully demand that they receive quick fixes for these things.

    Oracle teaming with PHP? The worst security nightmare ever. PHP is absolutely craptastic from a security viewpoint (insecure default configuration, etc.), for example the mail() function makes it the favorite of spammers, because you can use it to spam a lot with it - because the mail() function's broken implementation allows spammers to send out mail in the thousands. Working around it is possible, but cumbersome - 99% of the people using the function doesn't even know about the issue, so its a spam-haven.
    • Would you be able to direct me to resources on how to work around the issue? >.>
      • Sure. [perl.org]

        The issue with the mail function is that PHP grabs the four variables specified when calling the mail() function, then puts it into a template and pushes it to sendmail/postfix/qmail/etc stdin. Someone can include a template inside the template and php happily treats it as a separate mail even with a totally different from and to field.

        The easiest workaround is that you configure your mailserver that the www-data/php user can only send mail to the local network.

        More workarounds here [damonkohler.com]. Some discus

  • And as we jump ship from JBoss... (Score:5, Funny)

    by bunyip ( 17018 ) on Friday February 10, 2006 @12:40PM (#14688678)
    we'll all be yelling "Geronimo.....!!!!!"

    (rimshot)

  • I can already hear the whining (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blueZ3 ( 744446 ) on Friday February 10, 2006 @12:41PM (#14688690) Homepage
    Wah wah "evil corporations" "poor workers" "outsourcing" blah blah blah.

    One thing that seems to be overlooked is that with productivity rises, it takes fewer employees to do the same amount of work. The same is true after a merger, where it's redundant (no pun intended) to have two shipping departments or two sales forces.

    I've been laid off several times in the last six years (once on Christmas Eve), and it's never been a big deal. I'm not saying it's been "fun" but if you have a rational savings plan to build a contingency fund, you should be able make it during the times you're laod off. I have sympathy for folks who are losing their jobs, having been there myself, but I also know this isn't the end of the world. I hope they do, too.

      You can look at a layoff as a crisis or as an opportunity. Your choice.

  • is JBoss good to buy? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DeveloperAdvantage ( 923539 ) on Friday February 10, 2006 @01:31PM (#14689117) Homepage
    I am not sure why another company would want to buy JBoss.

    In its time it was very innovative with two things. First, making EJB type properties available to POJOs (properties like security, transactions, remoting). Second, they pioneered the business model of selling services based on a free product, which encouraged very wide-spread adoption. Both of these were controversial at the time and JBoss should be applauded for showing us the way.

    However, the problem is now many other companies do the same thing. Big application server companies give away free copies, at least for development teams. Java itself is moving toward making EJB type properties available to POJOs. On top of all this, over the last few years there has been a clear trend to move away from EJBs, favoring instead something like a Tomcat/Spring approach for J2EE applications, and, in other cases, the even lighter LAMP stack.

    It seems to me a few years ago JBoss would have been a great purchase, but right now I am not so sure.
    • JBoss lost a lot when Geronmino started up--taking a lot of the original developers.

      It's makes sense for Oracle to purchase another bloated app server--9iAS was a complete failure from an Orion standpoint--it got way out of hand in features and was too tied with EJB2.0. JBoss will help them break out of the 2.0 environment and with a more flexible, high performance appserver. Hopefully they learned their lesson from the Orion experience.

      As for Spring/LAMP, EJB3.0 has a lot of changes to the point of a

    • "...a clear trend to move away from EJBs, favoring instead something like a Tomcat/Spring approach..."

      ...using ORM persistence tools like Hibernate, which is owned by....... JBoss.

    • I've been under the impression that jboss was looking for a suitor for a while now, since they've had a little bad blood with IBM. Either Oracle or HP, they want to cash in and there is nothing wrong with that.

      Featurewise, they are the best opensource app platform going. Now does Larry integrate Jboss, harmoniously, with Oracle? That I very much doubt. I've been wrong before, look at all the stuff Sun is doing, I still don't trust them but they actually did it and they are slowly earning my respect

  • Has anyone given thought to the notion that a motivating factor for this purchase is to acquire and control the Arjuna [jboss.com] distributed transaction control infrastructure that JBoss just acquired [jboss.com] [sorry for the PDF] and plans to Open-Source this quarter?

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