|I think one big difference between open source and commercial research is
|the people who get involved doing the development (as opposed to the users
|such as myself). I think there is an over abundance of people on open
|source projects who are near the top of the productivity scale, and in
|commercial research there tends to be more of a normal mix, certainly over
|time this becomes true over time even if it isn't true when a company gets
|started. Of course on the negative side, open source egos tend to cause
|more fragmentation of the market than you would have in a commercial
|marketplace.
|
|Clearly there are plenty of people getting paid to work on Linux,
|one way or
|the other. If you, or some chunk of the JBoss development team
|could get to
|that state I think there would be no stopping you!
Thanks for the vote of confidence Jay. I am looking into JBoss future and
you know how much I care for this project. It is an understatement to say
that it is my life, since I have no life and this has grown beyond us :)
Ok I also realize that many people, "the crowd" that we are seeing now, that
comes here, gets the software tries it asks a few questions on the lists,
would be willing to pay support doc and packaging. I also realize that even
the "most productive" developers can break down when all you do is give give
give and there is nothing at the end of the day.
I am interested in a way to generate revenues from within the group. We are
looking at documentation selling, of course training, support if we can find
the proper infrastructure to track all those emails and who answers what,
the eternal consulting, but also all the OEM gigs that are embedding JBoss
and require some form of support.
This is what I call "JBoss Group" (JBG). The group of "JBoss Developers"
selling services around JBoss and supporting their own creation "JBoss.org"
(JBO). JBO remains of course a non-profit, open source loving and
recruiting ground it has always been. Some of us graduate in the commercial
arm and generate revenues for it. We remain independent and work on JBO.
The idea is that we need to maintain a solid structure at the core. I am
reading chaos and exhaustion as we go through our first expansion wave. The
group has put on mind boggling growth in the past few months and I now need
to find ways to finance the core at least. It is an illusion that JBoss
"self-maintains", small groups self maintain, big ones don't.
I am sorry if what I am saying is absolutely obvious to many of you (like it
was for Vaughn in his JDJ article). We are a crowd of "uber-geek" and many
"enlightend IT" or at least "technology leaders". We need to expand to
reach the "crowd", it is our natural target, our future. We will
democratize J2EE. We are a mature group OSS wise, we need the same
commercially.
Understand that I am not *really* talking about a RedHat model of
sponsorship, although that would be welcomed and we are working on these as
well, neither am I talking about Apache and the dead market for httpd. We
are operating in a very rich commercial field and pragmatically speaking we
see a need at the "mass market ubiquitous" level that other vendor don't.
We have been talking about ways to structure ourselves with the board, for
the past 2 weeks now. Lawyer involved and serious "business" talking. We
are bent on doing the right thing. The right thing says that succesful open
source groups *need to* spawn succesful businesses. From within. It doesn't
really exist today and that my friends, it is the wave of the future.
It will include many of you, with very low barriers to entry, let's ride it
shall we?
marc
|
|Cheers
|
|-----Original Message-----
|From: marc fleury [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
|Sent: Monday, February 19, 2001 12:32 PM
|To: JBoss-Dev
|Subject: RE: [jBoss-Dev] I guess we should call it quits ...
|
|
|well,
|
|sorry I am jumping late. Only today did I read it.
|
|While there is a lot of FUD, I do relate to some of the points made by MS
|guys.
|I do believe that even open source needs funding to grow and manage
|innovation :)
|I am in that spot right now and believe me it is a bitch to figure out :)
|
|Without proper "financing of research and innovation" it isn't as fast or
|powerful as proprietary funded models.
|
|There is a pragmatic solution we believe ;-)
|
|
|marc
|
|
||-----Original Message-----
||From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
||[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Luke Taylor
||Sent: Monday, February 19, 2001 2:52 AM
||To: JBoss-Dev
||Subject: Re: [jBoss-Dev] I guess we should call it quits ...
||
||
||
||
||"I'm an American, I believe in the American Way, I worry if the
||government encourages open source, and I don't think we've done enough
||education of policy makers to understand the threat."
||
||The mind boggles at such nonsense. But when they start talking about
||"The American Way"* you know they're getting desperate. They'll be
||saying Open Source is a "Socialist Software" plot next.
||
||Luke.
||
||* I guess it depends on exactly *which* American way you're talking
||about... Maybe he means the "Corporate giants crushing all competition
||and stifling innovation" American Way as opposed to the covered wagons,
||ordinary joe makes good through honest hard work and enterprise
||variety.
||
||
||--
|| Luke Taylor.
|| PGP Key ID: 0x57E9523C
||
|
|
