I look at the threat of lawsuits defending open source IP as more evidence that open source is becoming a viable business model. It means there is money on the table that somebody wants. ;)
The summary is that the JBoss project (http://www.jboss.org) was snubbed a long time ago by the Apache Software Foundation to provide a base for an Apache J2EE project. Yesterday, the ASF has announced a J2EE effort (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10872) and stated that JBoss developers are part of the effort. I'll bet its actually former JBoss developers who previously walked out of the project. The guy heading up the JBoss project (Marc Fleury) has his panties in a wad and will not allow the JBoss source to be licensed under the Apache Software License. More soap opera below. John Hebert -----Original Message----- From: marc fleury To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 8/5/03 11:33 PM Subject: [jboss-news] July 2003 news ... NEWS Xxxx JBoss J2EE certification effort. JBoss is increasingly used in production and as you all move to production we realize that certification brand becomes an important check mark. We have the financials to take it on, so we are. So many people have asked us where that was at and the press is having a field day with the story. It seems everyone likes drama. So there is no drama at least not anymore on our side. For all intents and purposes, JBoss has agreed to ALL the conditions imposed by SUN. It includes what for us is a hefty sum of money. They didn't give us a break, they didn't give us any break, which is kind of normal if you think about it as there are many parties involved and SUN must treat all licensees the same. In short the ball is in SUN's court and we are looking forward to inking the contract. Apache J2EE effort. First a bit of history. I offered EJBoss when it was 4 month old to Apache. The guys at Jakarta vote OK unanimously and their vote was overridden by Brian Behlendorf. The reason from behlendorf was that they 'were not the dust bin of open source projects'. I heard the Apache crowd got offended for me calling them "a bunch of fat ladies drinking tea" at a later date when they were running around telling us how to run our project. We had reports that this was the non-official reason for this "challenge". Challenge accepted. More seriously as we overtake them in corporate penetration and business model, I guess they are finally looking beyond the HTTPD C codebase and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. We are the real thing, all we have so far is talk and announcement, announcements are a dime a dozen. Apache code on this project has yet to be released and then production reached and then maturity bla bla bla. I have little comment on the project except to say that JBOSS IS NOT A PART OF IT. In a misleading announcement Apache chairman's Greg Stein implied JBoss was participating and that JBOSS CODE WAS PART OF THE PROJECT. No current JBoss developers are participating in the Apache J2EE project and since JBoss is LGPL only full copyright holders can offer JBoss code under other licenses. Bottom line? JBoss can't be forked by apache. As our customers know, we are a business, a serious one and we seriously believe in and defend "professional open source". That includes legal protection of IP. Make no mistakes, JBoss will AGGRESIVELY defend its copyright and LGPL license. ... xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Marc Fleury, Ph.D Founder JBoss Group, LLC xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx _______________________________________________ jboss-news mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.jboss.org:8080/mailman/listinfo/jboss-news
