Obviously I am always speaking for myself and have never represented my employer on the internet ;-).
Evil was in jest of course. More accurately, it is disingenuous the way IBM uses open source to found "standards" before bringing them back "in house" and turning them proprietary. Maybe it makes sense from a business standpoint, but I can assure you that after being burned before on this, I won't be particularly cooperative with IBM in the future no matter how many college interns they promise to devote to projects I'm involved in. The bad karma will catch up to you in the end and ultimately your customers will begin to understand what the IBM version of open source really is. In my experience, accepting IBM's support in an open source project is something like accepting large wooden gifts from Trojans. They'll burn you in the end. I did not always feel this way, it took experience. -Andy ==== 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 Please respond to "Research Triangle Java User's Group mailing list." To [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc Subject Re: [Juglist] Sun to open Java source for real? >=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 >> _______________________________________________ >> Juglist mailing list >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> http://trijug.org/mailman/listinfo/juglist_trijug.org >=20 >=20 > _______________________________________________ > Juglist mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://trijug.org/mailman/listinfo/juglist_trijug.org _______________________________________________ Juglist mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://trijug.org/mailman/listinfo/juglist_trijug.org _______________________________________________ Juglist mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://trijug.org/mailman/listinfo/juglist_trijug.org _______________________________________________ Juglist mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://trijug.org/mailman/listinfo/juglist_trijug.org
