Aaron Mulder wrote:
> On Wed, 1 Nov 2000, Ole Husgaard wrote:
> > I have a few, but let me give you one of the possible scenarios
> > I fear most:
>
> Fear? This is the situation I *hope for* most!
I hope there are a few things in this scenario you do _not_ *hope for*:
- A vendor making their own private modifications to the jBoss
source without contributing their modifications back to the
project, or even publishing their modifications.
- A vendor claiming they have found bad bugs in the original
jBoss code and fixed them in their own. That _is_ good for
sales and differentiating _their_ jBoss distribution from
other jBoss distributions.
- A vendor adding hooks and twists to their jBoss distribution
to tie their customers to their jBoss distribution.
It might be easier to just go public domain, but by using
copyright and a license we have a chance to say some reasonable
requirements (like contributing modificated code back) _must_
be met in exchange for using and redistributing our code.
> If jBoss is so
> popular that commercial J2EE vendors start integrating it instead of
> writing their own, then *we have won*! I don't think anyone at Apache was
> complaining when some commercial knock-offs sprung up, offering extra
> security, commercial support, etc. And surprise, surprise, all the time
> those commercial companies dump into QA cycles, documentation, fancy
> packaging, etc. is time they're not spending on developing new features,
> so they just grab the new "latest Apache" for their next release. (Or so
> I hypothesize, since I haven't actually used any of those commercial
> releases - does that tell you anything?).
Starting commercial enterprises for adding value to OSS is
hard. I think it should be allowed, but adding their own
private modifications without publishing the source of the
modifications under the original license should IMO _not_
be allowed.
Looks to me like this kind of enterprises can add the most
value by offering support and warranties.
> Now, for many of the people the "dark forces" serve, they are
> offering a valuable service. Those clients value stability and support
> over cutting-edge features. These are the clients that will never use a
> product from a CVS tree. These are, in fact, clients that would never
> even consider using jBoss otherwise, because there's no "guaranteed
> support response time", no QA process, etc. So the "dark forces" are in
> fact *expanding the market for jBoss*!
In my scenario, the Dark Force is only expanding the market
for Darkened jBoss, and they can ruin the "market" for plain
jBoss.
But you are right about "guaranteed support response time" and
"QA process".
> Now, let's consider companies such as X03 and Olliance, who are
> providing commercial *open-source* server products, based on projects like
> jBoss.
Don't know Olliance, but X03 seems to accept the GPL restrictions,
and so does dozens of other enterprises.
I think we should get rid of the current license problem in jBoss
so that X03 can safely upgrade the jBoss part of their distribution.
In fact, I think we owe that to them.
> I say "products like jBoss" and not "jBoss", because of the
> GPL.
I think the problem is with jBoss, _not_ the GPL.
Otherwise enterprises like RedHat wouldn't be in the market.
> With all the controversy demonstrated recently, it doesn't even
> matter who's right or wrong.
I think it matters. And any good decisionmaker would think
so too.
> I just witnessed the greatest single flock
> of backpedaling I have ever seen. It went something like this: "Oh my
> *God*! If all the *developers* are fighting this much, there's *no way*
> this license can be safe for our clients!!!"
We are past the flaming phase now, and are having a good
and sober discussion about the problems at hand.
If someone is so easily moved, I guess they might be easily
moved again once the problems have been resolved.
> So instead of commercial open-source J2EE server products using
> jBoss, you're going to see commercial open-source J2EE server products
> *competing with* jBoss. Dumping all their developer time into other
> products.
We already have two such "competitors", and they did not
pop up because of the license problems at hand.
I do not think that changing to their licenses will make
them disappear.
The BSD license is so permissive that in the long run
only _one_ "competitor" with this license survives.
> Sure, it's easy to say "let them go," but really, our goal here is
> to put together the best EJB server, not a room full of candidates.
Well, I don't want to "lock them up" either.
IMHO there _must_ be room for someone to raise a licensing
problem, and there _must_ be room for it to be discussed.
If not licensing problems may not be resolved, and that is
a lot worse than someone getting afraid about a discussion.
Best Regards,
Ole Husgaard.
