Time to call the Red Hat-JBOSS deal a failure?

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so we should all abandon OSS?: Hi Dana,

I have a few issues with your post (I was with JBoss from
early 2004 until I left Red Hat in November 2007 by the
way). Because SpringSource is holding user events in 5-
star resorts, while RH is a little more responsible with their
expenses (they could afford 5 star resorts in theory, but
would that be fair to shareholders?) -- that's a pretty
irrelevant argument, don't you think? And while
SpringSource is bragging about taking market share from
JBoss, I seem to recall fondly all the times (daily) that Marc
would brag about taking market share away from BEA and
IBM. And while we actually had significant evidence to
back up these claims (I don't see any market share reports
to back up the SpringSource stuff you mention), you still
didn't see anyone in the industry, especially as respected
as yourself, making claims that it was time for BEA or IBM
to call themselves a failure.

I could nitpick other details further, but I won't. The big
problem I have is that your central premise is a very scary
one indeed. If RH has truly "failed" to integrate JBoss,
because of the inherent issues with the OSS model not
transferring ownership of its codebase or customer base,
then you're basically saying that all OSS acquisitions are
doomed. In other words, you're saying OSS belongs at the
project level, but try and grow it into a company with a
viable exit strategy, and it is guaranteed to fail. I'm one of
those RH managers who left to join new tech start-ups --
maybe I should get out of the OSS world while I still can?

The RH-JBoss deal had some issues, but I am thankful to
RH for paving the way. Each subsequent acquisition of an
OSS company should, theoretically and hopefully, get
easier. I guess we'll have to wait and see with MySQL...

Katie Poplin
www.xaware.org; Posted by: kpoplin@... Posted on: 03/04/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use