I don't think any company has a corner on "evil" - even Chip will back me up on that...
Bottom line, the company that best listens to its customers and delivers on what THEY want, will win. A company's self-interest and the good of its customers can and should align - in fact there's no other way. Oh, never mind, I did think of one pretty big exception... But if we start doing the exact opposite of what our customers want us to do - that is, to strongly support standards, then we will lose their business and our leadership in the industry. I can't see that happening, go ahead and save this thread if you want, and I know a lot of you have been in the business longer than I am so maybe you have a better sense of things than I do. I could always be wrong, but all the downsides of forking Java standards for IBM's benefit would not seem to be outweighed by the benefits of doing so. Ultimately it sounds like bad business practice to me.
I disagree with Andy about it being evil to contribute to an open-source project and then create successful projects based on that code. This is not friendship - it's business. Business proceeds by mutual benefit. The open-source projects benefit, IBM benefits, the customer benefits because you can use open-source free products or commercially developed and supported projects from IBM. There is plenty of room for both, the use of the "proprietary" bogeyman word notwithstanding...
All thoughts are my own.
Regards,
Greg Ackerman
| [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/04/2004 11:42 AM
|
|
>=20
> Personally, I think that IBM would almost immediately fork it (if the
> license permitted) and that would be the beginning of the end of Java.
>
That=B9s crazy talk. While IBM is definitely way evil (don't forget,
Microsoft learned all their dirty tricks from IBM and IBM has the most evil
software patents on probably everything down to if statements -- in fact
they may have the patent to evil itself ;-) Hi greg) and loves to fork open
source projects and make them proprietary while claiming to be a friend,
they already have their own Java.
An open source Java does not have to allow you to call forks Java if they
are not in fact compatible with Java. In fact, I'm using the VM spec right
now to goof around with my own VM written in C (as a refresher for fun) and
I could release it open source all I like.
To be truly open source they have to allow independent open source
implementations from their code which they will open. They have to allow
interim "not-java" releases of the code (because to be open you have to be
able to get the code before we're done with it!).
To be truly open (which I doubt they will)...
They have to open the process for defining Java. This doesn't mean they
have to allow me to "embrace and extend" java ala Microsoft. They aren't
"open sourcing" their trademark. Fork JBoss and call it JBoss and see how
many seconds before we sue you. Fork JBoss and call it MyEJ and don't
change the license from LGPL and there is nothing we can do. Such can be
done with Java.
-Andy
=20
> I think that's why IBM wants it open-sourced - so that they can fork it, =
on
> the way to a proprietary implementation.
>=20
> That's what they did to Apache Axis.
>=20
>=20
>> OTOH, there are already
>> FOSS Java implementations,
>> so if Sun opens the source
>> to the reference implementation,
>> maybe it wouldn't hurt anything.
>> I'm assuming they would still
>> retain control of the brand name,
>> and presumably anybody wanting
>> to call their Java implementation
>> "Java" would have to pass Sun's
>> compatibility tests, much like
>> the situation today for
>> J2EE app servers...
>>=20
>> TTYL,
>>=20
>> Phil R.
>>=20
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>=20
>=20
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