Three points to add:
(1) Very seldom will a commerical organization, treated as an OEM customer,
wish to embed the entire product. JBoss's modularity lends itself nicely to
such an OEM approach because of its modularity. Certainly the license
permits an organization to grab the JMX core and EJB servers, or some
peripheral service, free of charge, but when it comes to integrating
proprietary service add-ons (clustering, connectors, different TP engines,
etc.) into JBoss the smartest approach is to make the folks who wrote the
code stakeholders in the new product. This means exposing closed code to the
open source developers, which cannot happen in an open source climate. So
the JBoss integration, in as much as forking is deemed an ugly alternative
and assuming the commerical organization respects and wishes to participate
in the open source endeavor without exposing pieces of its own proprietary
code, means hiring people like Marc and Rickard to lead the integration on a
for-fee contractual basis.
(2) Open source engineers don't participate in the licensing, certification,
iteration, and release schedule deadlines that most commerical organizations
face. Paying some of the core JBoss developers to accept a business's
requirements in all these areas is valuable, and in no way competes with
anything that goes on in these lists. It has no relevance to config or
support issues, it's about ensuring that a given rev of JBoss meets a
business's basic OEM requirements in order to be documented, shipped, and
marketed to the satisfaction of stockholders. If the JBoss developers can be
contracted to participate in such cycles, then they should be paid well.
(3) It's good for the entire JBoss community when a commerical product
decides to commit to JBoss. In the future, given Sun's draconian approach
with certification of J2EE, there may well be only 2 or 3 valid
implementations of these commoditized technologies. When a commerical
organization adopts JBoss's containers, it helps ensure that JBoss is one of
those 2-3 -- and the core JBoss community, so far as they help make that
happen, should profit from that.
psn
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan OConnor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "jBoss" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2001 1:09 PM
Subject: RE: [jBoss-User] Jboss support services
> Hi,
>
> I appreciate this point of view that JBoss must be "completely
> free." I do, however, respectfully disagree with it.
>
> I think it's important to understand first, that the services offered by
> a company like Telkel are not, strictly speaking, competing with
> this mailing list. The additional value provided by people like Marc
> is to have support, training, and development services available to
> those organizations that work under deadlines and in business
> situations that demand the highest standards. This support is
> structured, timely, and _guaranteed_. Who better to hire than the
> container developers? Well, they are available if you want them.
> IMHO this is good news, not bad. But if you don't have use for
> these services, then simply don't buy them. They will never be
> mandatory, given the terms of the LGPL.
>
> I understand that there are some people who believe software
> should be "free" (with various meanings) for ideological reasons.
> Christophe, I don't know where you stand on that issue. Your
> points were very practical, actually. Anyway, it's probably useless
> to discuss the philosophical reasons for and against this viewpoint,
> since people rarely change their mind from such discussions.
> Suffice it to say that most of the JBoss people believe that there is
> a role for the market to play in software development. (I base this
> statement on information from these mailing lists.)
>
> Furthermore, the bulk of JBoss has been developed by a small
> handful of people motivated at least in part by making a living. The
> cathedral-vs-bazaar explanation for open-source software probably
> has its merits, but in practice JBoss thus far has gone forward
> mostly on the cathedral plan. You can't expect the cathedral
> architects to work indefinitely without pay. So there has to be a
> role for service, support, and associated products.
>
> I know that this is mostly a labor of love for Marc and Rickard (the
> heart and brains of JBoss). But if they are going to continue to
> devote vast amounts of time to JBoss, they can't work 100% for
> free. Nor should they. (Nor should they work even 1% for free,
> unless they want to. I see no ethical obligation on anyone here.)
>
> Don't get me wrong... I think that there are many motivations for the
> people who work on JBoss, and some of those reasons are of the
> "good for humanity" type (and the "this is fun" type too). But if they
> were to view the open-source license of JBoss as a business
> strategy to grab market share and make their services and
> associated products more valuable, I say good for them. Either
> way, I get a great product for free with all the source code.
>
> -Dan
>
> P.S. If some organization really wants Rickard, Marc, etc. to work
> full-time on the "free" JBoss application server core, e.g. on
> clustering or whatever features are important to it, may I suggest
> sponsoring them to do so?
>
>
> On 25 Jan 01, at 17:19, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> >
> > I do not like this idea, why :
> >
> > 1 - JBoss is open source and free, until now, I have receive from JBoss
the
> > best support I have ever seen, due to discussion groups
> > and attention of Rickard, and others peoples involved in the project. If
we
> > cancel this kind of support, I m not sure that the project will
> > have the same success.
> > So, why having payed support, when this free support cost nothing, is
> > really good, and come from peoples that shares experiences
> > and knowledge.
> > If we have payed support, by example a team of 10 guy with good
knowledge,
> > until now I have a helpdesk of more than 100 real
> > developers.
> >
> > 2 - Often, some project manager like to have payed support (even if it
is
> > not necessary). Why ? simply because if their project
> > failed, they can say that the problems are due to poor and/or bad
support
> > (I have already see this !!! Yes). Also, for Telkel, they
> > can have some problems in Justice too ! Args !
> > I have a friend that is an expert of this kind of problems, and he say
that
> > it is possible (rare, but possible !).
> >
> > I think this project must be completely free
> >
> > Christophe
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Shahar Solomianik
> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "'jBoss'"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > om> cc:
> > Sent by: Subject: RE:
[jBoss-User] Jboss support services
> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > -dogs.com>
> >
> >
> > 01/25/01 04:47 PM
> > Please respond to
> > "jBoss"
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > I am willing to get paid for answering questions about jBoss !
> > not that I commit to give the right answer if at all... :-)
> >
> > Shahar
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Kemp Randy-W18971
> > Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2001 4:09 PM
> > To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
> > Subject: [jBoss-User] Jboss support services
> >
> >
> > I have a marketing idea: it may be garbage or it may be great. What
about
> > Telkel offering support services for Jboss, at a fee, of course? If you
> > look at Resin, for example, the JSP engine at www.caucho.com, they are
open
> > source, but they do have a support structure you can buy into. I was
just
> > thinking about this, as more companies may open up to Jboss if there is
a
> > company offering paid support.
> >
> >
> > --
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> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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>
>
>
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