At 12:41 AM 6/4/2004, Phillip Rhodes wrote:
That's what they did to Apache Axis.
I'm not familiar with the details on this.. would you mind elaborating? I know that at one time IBM had some people contributing to the Axis project...
They most certainly did.
Then they took the Apache Axis source code, mixed in their own changes (some of which were worthwhile ones to improve performance and other things), and renamed all of the packages to totally different ibm package names.
Now it is called an IBM proprietary implementation, no source is available, and they do not even mention Apache Axis, at least not in any of the documentation that I have looked it.
It is still obvious that it is what was Apache Axis underneath, though. For example, the "And now some services....." web page is identical, as are many other things.
The Apache license allowed this. So IBM did nothing wrong.
Microsoft has done similar things. Most big companies do.
In my opinion, though, Apache surely made a mistake, by allowing such things in their license. It pretty well ensures that their project will not survive. DO you thing that opens-source programmers program in order to have their source code later survive mainly in proprietary implementations for which no source is available?
Of course, the Apache Foundation is chock full of IBMers. Do you think that IBM (or Microsoft etc.) does these things out of the goodness of their heart?
IBM acted in their own best profit-making interest. They will always do that. As a matter of fact, they are obliged to do so by their obligation to their shareholders.
I will tell you that is not the first time they, or Microsoft, has done this kind of thing. They are *extremely" aggressive on intellectual property issues.
Can you imagine what an opportunity a Board of Trustees for an Open Source Java would be for this kind of gaming?
Marc Fleury understands this issue exactly.
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