>From: Joseph B. Ottinger [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>
>Why do you say "pity?" (I'm assuming you don't mean "piety" here.) Why
>should it be open source? Do you think you can apply patches
>faster than
>the Orion team? (I don't think I could, nor do I think you
For me, the value of source is not that I would be able to fix bugs -
although I might very well be able to do so. The real value is that
source code substitutes reasonably well for documentation.
Here's a hypothetical exception for you:
com.evermind.server.rmi.OrionRemoteException: CrypticMessage
at something.you.recognize.if.you.Are.lucky()
at com.evermind.server.http.d3.sw(JAX)
at com.evermind.server.http.d3.su(JAX)
at com.evermind.server.http.ef.s1(JAX)
at com.evermind.server.http.ef.do(JAX)
at com.evermind.util.f.run(JAX)
We've probably all experienced this at least once. Probably it was a
silly mistake in the deployment descriptor, but the error shows up as an
exception in the wrapper or somewhere else. I know I've seen posts to
this list of exceptions which were obfuscated all the way up to the
throw statement. Rare, but annoying as all hell.
I've spent a lot of time in trial and error when a quick glance at the
source code would have answered my question. Nothing documents like the
code.
I've even found the JDK source to be necessary - I had to comb through
the RMI-IIOP source code to figure out what the error codes I was
getting meant. Using RMI-IIOP is like using Orion, but without the
(usually) verbose error messages and support community. :-(
>it, and their model fits them. Going open source means that they get
>relegated to supplying services only, which may indeed be
>profitable, but
>is profit the only motive? (I say no, because if it were, they'd sell
>Orion for more money.)
I should point out that shipping source does not mean the product has to
be free. Resin is a good example.
It does open up the opportunity for competitors to see potential trade
secrets. I don't know what black magic is under the covers, so I have
no idea if this is a concern. Given how far ahead of the pack Orion is
regarding the emerging j2ee specs, I suspect it might be.
Personally, I've never seen a development tool or library documented
sufficiently well that I didn't feel a need for source code. I *hate*
trial-and-error programming, but it always consumes an inordinate amount
of my development time. Believe me, I read manuals cover-to-cover, but
even the good ones haven't stood up under fire. And the bad ones have
just been plain wrong :-)
I'm happy to continue using Orion, even without source code, mostly
because I've already gotten over the worst of the learning curve. But
there were times when I would have jumped on JBoss in a second if it
supported EJB2.0. I wonder how many people who don't need the new spec
features or have bigger pocketbooks have bailed because of documentation
issues, and I wonder if shipping the source would be a quick
half-solution to this problem.
Jeff
