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The Apache/Sun Relationship Worsens 203

Posted by Hemos from the gotta-loosen-your-grip-on-java dept.
d6y writes "Over on the O'Reilly weblogs there's an entry on the relationship between Sun's Java Community Process and Apache. Sun have been rubbing people up with wrong way (the problems of licensing open source J2EE containers; stuts v. JavaFaces; log4j v. JDK 1.4 logging....) and I hope this gets sorted out real soon. See also the original VNUNet article and Apache's position paper."
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The Apache/Sun Relationship Worsens More

The Apache/Sun Relationship Worsens

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  • Apache/Sun (Score:5, Informative)

    by Orville ( 104680 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @10:35AM (#3044366) Journal
    A couple of thoughts:


    While it does matter in the aesthetic that Sun is restricting certification of open-source J2EE platforms, fortunately Sun has not taken drastic positions of 'shutting down' JBoss or anything like that. This letter [jboss.org] from Marc Fleury seems to clarify the exact issue with JBoss.


    This seeming 'rivalry' between Sun & Apache is not as clear-cut; Many of the Jakarta contributors are Sun employees and engineers. (Tomcat/Catalina is used as the 'reference implementation' for the Servlet/JSP specifications.) For more on this, check out the former 'open source guy' at Sun: James Duncan Davidson [x180.net]

    • So, as a Tomcat user, I ask my self:
      What will this mean for my favorite oss servlet-container?

      How will this impact Tomcat development?

      I would like to hear the /. communitys thoughts about this.
      Especially from any Jakarta developers out there.
      • Tomcat is not a J2EE implementation so there's no direct implication. In addition, it is promoted (by Sun) as a reference implementation for servlets.

        If apache decides to abandon their Jakarta projects that doesn't mean these projects die. It just means that they will continue under a different flag (and there are enough interested parties to make this happen).

        IMHO it would be bad for the apache foundation since most of its showcase projects (excluding the webserver) are the Jakarta projects. No doubt a significant part of their funding is related to these projects.

    • Re:Apache/Sun (Score:5, Informative)

      by acroyear ( 5882 ) <jws-slashdot@javaclientcookbook.net> on Thursday February 21, 2002 @10:46AM (#3044432) Homepage Journal
      Yes, many Jakarta contributors are from Sun, particularly with regard to Tomcat/Catalina. But many are not.

      Outside of Tomcat, IBM has been the biggest commercial vendor contributing to Apache, including core items Xerces, SOAP, and Log4J, and in each case Sun has refused to let Apache be the de facto standard (inspite of that being what i believe most java developers want), and has instead put out alternative APIs which its embedded with the JDK, thus locking everybody w/ 1.4 down to a standard that now has little room to grow.

      And in some cases the 1.4 bundled version is inferior to the Apache effort (yes, Crimson was/is better than Xerces 1.x because of IBM's redundant i18n overhead, but its NOT better than 2.0; and jdk1.4 logging is definitely not nearly as good as log4j).

      But as M$ has shown, people will stick with whats bundled, even if inferior, 'cause "its just easier that way"...

      ...& all java developers will suffer.

      Also, yes Tomcat is the "reference implementation" and all that, but that's because Sun has also released the code for watchdog, which is the standards-compliance testing tool for Servlets. What Apache and O'Reilly want to see is a similar effort to release the standards-compliance tests for other J2EE software specifications like EJB, and they consider it hypocritical for Sun to hold onto those tests in exchange for as much money as they charge for them.
      • But as M$ has shown, people will stick with whats bundled, even if inferior, 'cause "its just easier that way"...

        Which can be correct for consumer software, but we're talking about software developers now. If Xerces/Log4J are really that much better (read: save my time when developing) I will certainly take 5 minutes to download them.

        • Re:Apache/Sun (Score:5, Insightful)

          by acroyear ( 5882 ) <jws-slashdot@javaclientcookbook.net> on Thursday February 21, 2002 @11:34AM (#3044691) Homepage Journal
          the point is that if you are a new developer or program manager, working on a new project, and you see that the JDK tools already have an XML parser and a logging library, you're not going to even bother to look for alternatives.

          Just like nobody looks for alternatives to M$ Office or M$ IE, because its already bundled by OEMs onto just about every P4 box going out the door...

          its take developers of considerable experience, and influence over their manager / respect from their manager, to introduce tools to a development environment that on the surface seem redundant to the tools already at hand. right now, many of us have that experience, and the awareness of the better tools, but in a year that might not be the case...

          • Re:Apache/Sun (Score:3, Informative)

            by mark_lybarger ( 199098 )
            most certainly, and that goes for any platform/tool/whatever. every project of considerable size should have a compent senior engineer on staff to guide these types of things.
            • well, duh...but you'd be surprised just how stupid and dilbert-like some companies and project teams can be...
              • sounds like a clear case of "you get what you pay for". i've been on a project like that, but it's pretty hard for amatures fsck up a Visual Basic database maintenance application development project :).
          • the point is that if you are a new developer or program manager, working on a new project, and you see that the JDK tools already have an XML parser and a logging library, you're not going to even bother to look for alternatives.

            And why should you, if the supplied tools work well enough for your needs? If they don't work, you'll find an alternative implementation.

            its take developers of considerable experience, and influence over their manager / respect from their manager, to introduce tools to a development environment that on the surface seem redundant to the tools already at hand

            Hmm, if something doesn't work right, and your managers won't let you replace it with something that does work... ...

            I don't understand the point of view (that seems to be pretty common in Apache community) that there shouldn't be alternative options and that everything Apache does, and manages to create a reasonably active community of developers/users for, should be adopted as a de facto standard. This is similar to the attitude of people who argue that there should be, for example, only one open source J2EE implementation because having more "is a waste of resources". What does the Apache group have against having alternatives?

      • Sun has refused to let Apache be the de facto standard (inspite of that being what i believe most java developers want), and has instead put out alternative APIs which its embedded with the JDK, thus locking everybody w/ 1.4 down to a standard that now has little room to grow.

        Look -- nobody is locked down to anything. If develoeprs see more benefit in using Apache software packages for logging or xml parsing, there is nothing stopping them from packaging those along with their application and using them instead.

      • ...& all java developers will suffer.

        Funny, I'm a Java developer and I don't feel I'm suffering. I'm competent enough to pick the tools I need by myself.

  • If the java engine works, and works to such a degree that you could swipe Sun's stuff away and replace it with the one you've written, then is there _really_ any point in getting Sun to give you a little "Sun Approved" sticker on your product?
    • That's a really good point, however I must stress that when dealing with customers, (at least the ones i've dealt with) that it definitely matters. Most resellers and larger companies only deal with certified software for customers. While the "Sun Approved" stamp doesn't mean much to you or I, it does to that big corporation that has a lot invested in Sun products. From the POV of a large company, knowing that some software is going to be compatible with your large investment gives both a sense of union and a place to turn to in case something goes wrong. Usually this same thing holds true for hardware vendors...
    • When you go see the boss (the money guy) it makes all the diference. Is that sun (or other top company) certificated ? no, it's opensource. Not the same thing ...

    • Re:Really necessary for a big Sun stamp of approva (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hrbrmstr ( 324215 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @10:52AM (#3044463) Homepage Journal
      For large organizations who (like mine) made a $50mil investment in moving to J2EE applications as a corporate standard, the Sun stamp of approval is absolutely necessary.

      Personally, I'll take Tomcat/Catalina + MySQL + Velocity + PoolMan over most Java app servers, and only feel that J2EE benefits extremely large apps with the need to connect to legacy systems.

      If the open source community starts to shun Java because of what Sun is doing, it will leave a huge hole and kill the momentum that has built up over the past 5 years or so.

      How many of us Java developers began web-development by downloading Tomcat? How many of us love Struts and Velocity and don't want to lock our skillsets into proprietary solutions from BEA or IBM?

      Sun needs to draw then walk a fine line between keeping the major app server purveyors happy while keeping the playing field open for those of us who want to use the technology, but don't have $50K handy for a single CPU license.
      • >For large organizations who (like mine) made a
        >$50mil investment in moving to J2EE applications as
        >a corporate standard, the Sun stamp of approval is
        >absolutely necessary.

        Think about *why* certification is
        a checklist item: You want to know
        that your application code will run, to the
        degree to which you have adhered to the
        certified interface contracts. The same goal
        can often be met by using a single revision
        of an open-source solution -- just
        don't upgrade. The certified COTS solution
        and the open-source solution have real cost
        tradeoffs, and I can't comment intelligently
        on how they play in your applications, but
        I do hope for the sake of your organization
        that you will actually analyze and weigh those
        trade-offs, rather than discounting one
        alternative because it doesn't satisfy a
        derived requirement without business
        legitimacy.

    • When your boss, CTO, CEO, et al want a J2EE application, you either deliver or you are fired, so that little sticker is important
    • Yes, the compatibility test suite is a really good one being allowed to say you passed it (by carying the compatibility logo) is quite different from spreading the rumor that software package is generally believed to be compatible.

      Effectively SUN is using their monopoly position (regarding the compatibility tests) to selectively grant licenses to market partners. IMHO the market should be open and anybody (including MS) should be allowed to attempt to pass the requirements (not necessarily for free).

  • This has been around for a while now... (Score:5, Informative)

    by mmcshane ( 155414 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @10:38AM (#3044388)
    here's a thread (J2EE considered harmful) [mail-archive.com] on the jakarta-general list that precipitated the Apache statement.
    • Well, since people who use other containers than WebSphere and/or write their apps more in line with modern ideas (read "Core J2EE Patterns") rather than old ways of using lots of entity beans (which is bad) don't have all those problems...

      I wish fans of "competing" technologies would find a way of actually say what's better with their way, instead of wasting their time posting FUD about how their mis-use of a technology means the technology is at fault.
      • J2EE patterns, specifically the EJB patterns, are really just putting lipstick on a pig, as they can't hide the underlying problems with reentrancy, locking, consistency, DB roundtrips etc. endemic to EJBs. This isn't a WebSphere problem by any means, I'd guess that IBM is better placed than many to develop a way out, at least for DB/2 users.

        Personally I recommend TOPLink, either with or instead of EJBs, to get rid of the most annoying aspects, I expect other persistence frameworks could help as well.

  • That's what happens with proprietary "standards" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dinotrac ( 18304 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @10:38AM (#3044390) Journal
    Sun gets to define what compliant is, just as Microsoft gets to define what compliance with its "standards" are.

    People who write to and use these platforms get what they deserve, and, presumably, what they want.

    One thing I don't understand, but I'm sure that many people in the \. community do:

    Is there any point to non-certified but highly compliant implementations? I'm sure the lack of certification would scare away commercial users, but what about others? Are they worth the trouble? Would they even want to use the stuff?

    • Is there any point to non-certified but highly compliant implementations?

      Only if your customers care. Certification is a way of convincing people that something is compliant without making them find out for themselves whether it's really compliant. It's like the difference between having a diploma, and having a transcript that lists all the classes necessery for graduation with passing grades. The diploma is a simple way to show, "Yes, I've graduated".

    • JBoss is real-world deployable - believe it (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Headius ( 5562 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @11:15AM (#3044590) Homepage Journal
      I work for a company that has chosen to deploy J2EE applications using JBoss, and has seen substantial success from doing so. The applications running in JBoss bring in hundred of thousands of dollars for us, and support multi-million-dollar vendor/customer data exchanges.

      As for the certification, more and more it comes with too high a cost. The price tag on the other "compliant" packages is way, way out of scope, and returns only minor additional results for us. You must also view certification from Sun's point - how much have they charged other major players for certification? How would those companies react if Sun now certified *for free* an open-source J2EE container given away *for free*. Where, for example , would BEA's pricing put them? Grossly overpriced, perhaps?

      Sun is caught in a rough position. If they reverse their position and certify JBoss, they run the risk of alienating current partners. If they don't certify them, open source communities will continue to take jabs at their so-called support for open projects.

      In the end, we don't really care. By our analysis, JBoss returns the best ROI of any of the J2EE containers. Certification is just a respectful (and expensive) nod from Sun. It doesn't define the real-world value of a product.
      • I'd be very curious (and I'm sure I'm not alone) about more details concerning your company's use of JBoss.

        Without giving away who your company is, can you answer the following questions?

        What was difficult about using JBoss in a production environment?

        What kind of load does it support?

        What parts of JBoss are you using?

        Did you purchase any documentation/support or did you do all the leg work yourself?
        • I came to my company only recently, so I'm not sure of all the details, but I know the only major problem they've had with JBoss is the lack of clustering/failover. The simple solution here has just been to run more JBoss instances (they're really friggin tiny) to cover all the bases. Performance has been great (not the best, naturally, but really top-notch), and ease of use is phenomenal.

          Personally, I'd say my biggest complaint is the available documentation. Even the for-sale docs aren't all-inclusive, and the free ones can be maddeningly vague. There are, however, many other sources for install and config information. The lack of complicators like a separate deployment tool (e.g. ejbc) or unfriendly supporting descriptors make documentation less of an issue.

          And of course, we all know how helpful full source can be...I don't know how many closed-source Java programs (puh-lease, that's like closed-source HTML pages) I've had to decompile to figure out what their hacked-up code is doing wrong...

      • Re:JBoss is real-world deployable - believe it (Score:5, Insightful)

        by elefantstn ( 195873 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @12:12PM (#3044914)
        Exactly - JBoss is the highest-quality, most-overlooked open source project in existence. It's just absolutely fantastic. The only thing missing is clustering, but 1) I don't need it and 2) it's coming in 3.0 anyway (I've messed around with the alpha builds' clustering capabilities). I highly recommend anyone thinking about J2EE at least give JBoss a shot, and why not, it's free.

        But on the other hand, I don't really have a problem with Sun not certifying it, and I don't really understand what all the fuss about it is. It's simple -- certification is a major cash cow for Sun. All the money they spend developing standards like EJB gets recouped when IBM, BEA, etc. pay to have their app servers certified. JBoss, since it's free, can't afford that. And who cares? I trust that JBoss works because I deploy EJBs and Servlets written to the standards and they Just Work. If you're in a bigger organization than I am that's spending $millions on your infrastructure so you don't just trust JBoss out of the goodness of your own heart, you have two options. 1)Test it yourself or 2)Pay IBM or BEA or someone else because they certify that they've tested it for you.

        What exactly is the big problem? Sure, Sun isn't the second coming or anything, but they provide well-written open standards that are unencumbered by patents that open source projects can implement. What the hell is wrong with that?

  • The Sun/OSS relationship (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kris ( 824 ) <kris-slashdot@koehntopp.de> on Thursday February 21, 2002 @10:42AM (#3044408) Homepage
    Sun's relationship to the OSS community is extremely difficult. Within Sun there is a lively corporate culture and a will to produce a high quality, performant and comfortable UNIX system. Unfortunately, the very same culture also fosters a special kind of NIH syndrome - what pain it was to get Sun to include current popular OSS tools like Perl, Bash and the like into their standard OS distribution!

    From a strategic POV, Sun is being increasingly cannibalized in the low end market by Linux and BSD solutions, and at the same time forced to include stuff for free that is differentiating them from Linux like SDS, Sunscreen, ACLs and similar because Microsoft offers such features in their OS for free as well.

    At the same time, Sun is not ready to embrace the OSS movement like, for example, IBM does. They fear that giving away code and ideas that they see as differentiation and advantage in an increasingly difficult market would harm their position and they would like to have some security and control, which the OSS process inherently cannot offer at all.

    So basically what we have here is a corporation with a fear to "let go" coming under more and more pressure in a difficult economic situation.

    • Re:The Sun/OSS relationship (Score:5, Informative)

      by acroyear ( 5882 ) <jws-slashdot@javaclientcookbook.net> on Thursday February 21, 2002 @10:53AM (#3044471) Homepage Journal
      The irony being that in their early days, when SunOS was only a minor-varient away from being pure BSD (thanks, B.Joy), they WERE actually giving away the OS and its features (like NFS), hoping on always being ahead of the competitors in speed to encourage the hardware sales that kept the company on top during the late 80s to mid-90s.

      Things were slowly changing by 1991 with SunOS 4, then with 5/2 they had to definitely switch to a "buy it only" since they themselves paid so much for getting SystemV in the first place...

      of course, just about every single one of us Sun users at the time were furious with the switch...Sun boxes to me are still crippled in speed because of SystemV's overhead compared to BSD, and the speed of BSD x86 boxes over SCO & other SystemV-based x86 releases just rubs our noses in it even more...

    • Re:The Sun/OSS relationship (Score:4, Insightful)

      by LordNimon ( 85072 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @10:57AM (#3044503)
      I think the reason why IBM embraces open source more than Sun is because IBM considers hardware and services to be more important (business strategy-wise) than software. Sun sees their OS as being a big part of the picture, whereas IBM sees their hardware and services as being the bigger part of the picture.

      • Re:The Sun/OSS relationship (Score:4, Insightful)

        by reemul ( 1554 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @11:30AM (#3044669)
        I think that the reason that IBM is devoting so many resources to Open Source is that they already had a huge programmer budget for their proprietary big iron operating systems and apps that just weren't going anywhere and weren't big selling points anyway - they were selling the hardware it ran on and applications that are still proprietary and run on Linux anyway (like DB2). Moving to open source let them spend the same or less money on development while getting for free the work of others around the world, and they got to look like good guys doing it. IBM is just spending money they were already going to spend, replacing proprietary software that was not a big part of their sales efforts.

        Sun, on the other hand, is hugely invested in their software sales. They see Solaris as a big selling point when pushing their offerings, and they really *really* want to make as much money as possible off of Java. Going Open Source, no matter how much the geeks at Sun like the idea, will be a huge blow to the bottom line. IBM is replacing one set of software that was largely free (as in beer) with another set of offerings that they don't charge for, so it doesn't hurt them. Sun would be giving up revenue from software that is bringing in a lot of money. They just can't (or think they can't) afford to go completely Open Source. Opening up Java to the extent they have, while maintaining control, allows Sun to still charge for some offerings (like the compatibility tests) and have a head start over competitors in future development efforts, since only they control where Java goes. Going completely Open causes them to lose both the cash and the control, and that they'll fight to the end.

        If you think IBM is really comitted to Open Source out of altruism and a philosophical agreement with the movement, try getting them to give away DB2.

      • Keep in Mind (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @11:40AM (#3044722) Homepage Journal
        IBM and Sun are competitors. Currently, IBM is using Open Source Software to undermine a couple of thorns in its side -- Sun and Microsoft. To a lesser extent, it could hurt Oracle as well (IBM sells DB2, which competes with Oracle, you see.)

        There are a fair amount of Open Source enthusiasts inside the company. Many of them used to be OS/2 enthusiasts, and you remember what happened with that product the moment some marketroid thought it might be inconvienent to keep producing it...

        What I'm saying here is IBMs advocacy of Open Source Solutions is not in the least bit altruistic. They will continue to be our "friend" as long as they can make money off what we do. The minute that is no longer the case, they will drop us like a lead balloon. If things get really tough, don't expect them to stand by us.

    • While I did a google search to find out what NIH syndrome was, I found this result:

      http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog000000 00 07.html

      It is an article written in defense of NIH; I found it an interesting read.

      eudas
    • I would suspect that the main reason for the difference between IBM and Sun in this regard is the difference in their business models. Sun generally seems to try to sell software/hardware packages. IBM tries to sell the software and hardware and also a big wad of consulting to get things started. The consulting is where most of the money comes from for IBM. So they can take the loss on the software itself.

      Perhaps Sun needs to develop a big services organization to thrive. It could be difficult, due to their culture..

    • Sun is being increasingly cannibalized in the low end market by Linux and BSD solutions
      Maybe I'm being overly semantic, but Sun is not being "cannibalized". They are simply being "eaten" -- they didn't write Linux or *BSD, they didn't market them; if they are losing to those OSes it's because they are a better value, not because of a failed strategy by Sun.

  • Text:http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/ (Score:4, Informative)

    by Commienst ( 102745 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @10:43AM (#3044412) Homepage
    Oreilly Weblog is real slow. This text does not include picture of the nerd who wrote the article, which is a good thing.
    -Commienst

    "Apache on warpath over Java license"

    by Steve Anglin
    Feb. 20, 2002

    According to vnunet.com, "The Apache Software Foundation's battle with Sun Microsystems stepped up gear
    last week as the open source community struggled to loosen Sun's cast iron grip on the Java platform." This is in response to, first, Lutris being turned-down for J2EE certification, and then JBoss, which is J2EE compliant from a technical standpoint, but apparently not J2EE compliant enough for Sun certification.

    Last week, ONJava.com published O'Reilly editor Mike Loukides' follow-up on the possibility of open source J2EE from Sun: Will You See Open Source J2EE Implementations? Not Likely. TheServerSide.com also published an interview with one of Sun's J2EE principles, Karen Tegan. While Sun essentially says it supports open source efforts, it does not want those efforts to impact the J2EE certification process, a process that clearly is closed source at best. See the conflict.

    As a high ranking member in the Java Community Process (JCP), Apache is part of the JSPA (Java Specification Participation Agreement). In this capacity, Apache can actively propose new and revised Java API specifications as well as integrate a particular specification under Jakarta, Apache's open source Java projects. Apache's reply is here in Apache's JSPA Position. According to Apache, "...Sun doesn't give a hoot about whether J2EE licensing restricts open source J2EE products (in case you missed it, it does)."

    Sun benefits from its relationship with Apache. Apache gives Sun "...an advertising statement...to claim that it (Sun) has a 'vision which uses open standards and non-proprietary interfaces'." If Apache's reply and suggestions go unanswered, Apache can put pressure on Sun in other, more severe ways. Without Apache, Sun could lose many of its Java developers as Jakarta projects would be affected. The impact could be quite severe, certainly in terms of publicity. Financially, who knows?

    Steve Anglin is Managing Editor of ONJava.com and O'Reilly Network's .NET DevCenter for O'Reilly & Associates' Online Publishing Group (OPG).
  • Sun has always been most standoffish towards the Opensource crowd. I've never understood why so many of the Open source advocates keep putting them up on a pedastal.

    They have a long history of claiming other's works as their own--Which in my opinion is the worst crime you can do against open source people, take away the credit!

    1. They claimed that the blackdown port of Java to linux was theirs!

    2. They "adopted" the free and entirely non-sun code base for Java Servlets (Jakarta) and claimed it was the "Sun Reference Platform"

    3. They "adopted" and FSCKED UP ROYALLY the XML4J/LotusXSL stuff that IBM had created and mangled out that god-forsaken peice of crap known as JAXP.

    4. At one time, Scott McNealy admitted that Sun had indeed been the brainchild behind XML.

    5. They ask ECMA to rubber-stamp their Java Language as an offical standard, but allow SUN to keep all rights for licensing and changing the language as they wish. ECMA tells them to "get bent" and SUN goes off sulking to anyone who will listen. Java still remains in the hands of the nutters who thought it up.

    It seems that from a cursory glance, SUN has done many things to piss off the Java and the Opensource crowds. It's a mystery to me why people attack Microsoft for crimes very similar to these, but always praise Sun for their benevolence.

    At LEAST Microsoft took their language and VM to ECMA, and said standardize it, and we'll accept it. (It doesn't hurt that ECMA is pretty MS friendly, and the chairman of the TC39 committee is a MS employee, but at least they took the right steps)

    Heh
    • 2. They "adopted" the free and entirely non-sun code base for Java Servlets (Jakarta) and claimed it was the "Sun Reference Platform"

      I'm not sure this is entirely accurate. I believe what happened was that back in the days of servlet 2.0, there was the JSDK and there was Apache JServ. Sun decided to donate their JSDK source to Apache and continued working on it as part of Tomcat.

      Tomcat is now the reference servlet/JSP implementation. I don't think I've ever seen Sun claim it is "theirs". Can you give a reference?

      Jon

    • Re:This is most typical of Slashdot (Score:5, Informative)

      by ChaseTec ( 447725 ) <chase@osdev.org> on Thursday February 21, 2002 @11:10AM (#3044556) Homepage
      >> 2. They "adopted" the free and entirely non-sun code base for Java Servlets (Jakarta) and claimed it was the "Sun Reference Platform"

      Yeah, they never did anything for Tomcat did they? (sarcasm) [ibm.com] A few of the developers for Tomcat were Sun employees until recently. Did you bother to check any of your other rants?
    • Good post, and on top of the bad will they are creating, Sun is doomed in the market.

      Linux is peeling away their low end (notwithstanding their effort to derail the linux rack market by buying and then effectively scuttling Cobalt), and IBM is shaking down their top end.

      Microsoft continues to confound Sun, even as McNealy turns up the vitriol. Scott - let me make this brief - you cannot beat Microsoft. Stop trying. Take a lesson from Steve Jobs - play nice or route around them, but don't try to take them on directly. They're tougher and wealthier and more influential than you.

      Hardware is getting cheaper, and software is becoming a commodity. Services are the last high margin business left, and Sun isn't a big player.

      • IBM is shaking down their top end

        This is arguable. IBM has failed to gain market share against Sun's Enterprise/Fire servers, and IBM's servers tend to not offer better price/performance. Also, IBM's server lineup is heavily fragmented between UNIX/RISC servers, mainframes, and Windows NT.
    • I challenge you to provide hyperlinks to back up your claims. Right now, what you say is mostly baseless.

  • Really Odd... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @10:45AM (#3044430) Homepage Journal
    This is really odd considering JBoss (open source) is the best J2EE webcontainer out there. Granted, it isn't part of the apache group, but is mostly used with apache webserver and the jakarta (apache subproject) tomcat servlet container.

    Maybe the "big wig" J2EE containers (IBM's Websphere, and BEA's WebLogic) are getting on Sun's back because of this??

    • Re:Really Odd... (Score:3, Informative)

      by bsletten ( 20271 )
      While clearly well-designed and offering a great feature set due to its JMX bus architecture, I'm curious how you come to the conclusion that JBoss is the best J2EE webcontainer out there.

      Certainly not for performance or documentation criteria [jmsbenchmarks.com]...

      What then? Bang for buck?

      I'm excited about its future, I just don't seeing it being adopted in production environments yet which clearly indicates skepticism toward your claim.

      • Your right, in that "best" was a horrible and general word to use.
        But I was refering to it being (AFAIK) the only container to implement EJB2.0, currently.
        True, it isn't the most efficient, but it is the most advanced, currently.

    • Re:Really Odd... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by BeerBaron ( 120755 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @11:41AM (#3044732)
      JBoss is *not* ready. The single fact that I had to change my code when going from 2.4.3 to 2.4.4 means that there are new bugs with point releases that I have to work around. Granted, I do a lot of heavy transactional-based work and touch much of the container, but with WebSphere, WebLogic or even Orion, I've never had to "fix" my stuff after they've fixed theirs.

      Also, JBoss comes bundled with Catalina, Jetty or Tomcat. That's great. Did you know that, up until 2.4.4, the Catalina release wouldn't allow you to change your root context for web applications? You could fix this by maintaining your own source of JBoss, but, when you're trying to manage your own project, the last thing you want to do is manage your own revision control for the application server. They fixed it in 2.4.4, but

      Missing little crap like that makes we worried about the *very* complex transactional nature for the EJB's and the upcoming clustering solution. That stuff is hard! Even BEA, with all its time and money, has had a hard time with its clustering/failover implementations.

      JBoss' implementation was written up on onjava.com. Want to know their suggested solution? Write your application to not need clustering and use a Cisco load-balancer. That's because their solution doesn't work.

      What about the auto-deployer? Don't try to update your EAR or WAR by overwriting the archive if the file's larger than 4MB. JBoss'll undeploy your aplication and fail to redeploy it.because it doesn't know how to wait until the copy operation is over. There's some settings to help alleviate this problem, but it's not perfect. I don't expect it to be from JBoss...I would from BEA, for example.

      So, let's think a bit before handing the crown to JBoss. Is it well docuemented, code-wise? Yes. Is it fast? For the most part. Does it behave as advertised? No. Will Marc Fleury make sure JBoss succeeds through sheer will? Yup. Will he step on toes? Yes, don't get in his way (for better or worse).

      The Baron
      • Hmmm... the future of clustering is a hard one to call IMHO. It's not clear to me that JBoss did the wrong thing by just defaulting to a load balancer-driven model - BEA and others can be seen as being on a path to eliminating caching and moving locking back to the database, meaning that there's no EJB clustering logic to speak of, just the HTTP session replication, and I'm not at all sure how that's going to evolve to handle SOAP clients nicely.

      • What about the auto-deployer? Don't try to update your EAR or WAR by overwriting the archive if the file's larger than 4MB. JBoss'll undeploy your aplication and fail to redeploy it.because it doesn't know how to wait until the copy operation is over.


        Yeah, cos rm application.jar ; cp ~/application.jar . is so difficult.

  • This week at the Atlanta Java Users Group (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PHAEDRU5 ( 213667 ) <instascreed&gmail,com> on Thursday February 21, 2002 @10:52AM (#3044465) Homepage
    The presenter talked about Struts and Tiles.

    Among his throwaway statements was "If you work on an open source project that becomes popular, you might get a job at Sun."

    Enough said.

  • Wake up, Sun! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IGnatius T Foobar ( 4328 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @10:56AM (#3044492) Homepage Journal
    Sun! Get with the program here. One of your most successful technologies is being directly targeted for destruction by the Evil Empire ... and you're fighting with the open source community? This is a sure-fire way to get yourself killed. You've got to have allies somewhere.

    Sun's problem is that they want to be a big monopoly like Microsoft, but they aren't one. It may be totallty obvious to Slashdot readers that the only way to successfully complete with Microsoft is to be allied with the open source community, but some players (Sun, Oracle, and even Apple to some extent) still think they can "win."

    The problem with the computer industry is that most of the companies involved act like spoiled children. The only exception is IBM, which is a mature company and acts like one.

    • Don't be so sure of IBM's benevolent intensions here. I am just as happy as everyone else that IBM is embracing open source, and no, I don't think they are going to turn around and try to control their contributions. However, you can bet that they are contributing to open source for their own benefit.

      Think about it, as the parent post implies, right now it's everyone vs. Microsoft, and to beat Microsoft you need allies (like open source). Sun wants to control java because it created it and it wants financial return on its investments. Letting go of control opens the door for other companies to snatch it up.

      I agree that IBM's contributions are a good thing, and that Sun needs so wake up and ally itselft more with the open source community. But don't forget, we live in a capitalist nation where money talks. IBM make look like the "nice guy" right now, but don't think they won't ditch open source the very second that it stops being a profitable investment.

      • Re:Wake up, Sun! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Omnifarious ( 11933 ) <eric-slash@omnif ... g ['us.' in gap]> on Thursday February 21, 2002 @12:35PM (#3045099) Homepage Journal

        I wouldn't dream of having IBM participate unless it fit their own best interests. The thing is, IBM is mature enough to realize that detailed and strong control over all of their technologies is not the key to success.

        Many other computer companies think the key to success is owning everything, or at least, as much as they can own. And that seems an attractive strategy on the fact of things, but is not in the long-term best interests of the company. IBM is one of the few companies that seems mature enough to realize that. Maturity != selflessness, maturity == enlightened self interest.

    • who 0wnz the corporate server market? microsoft may have a desktop monopoly, but that is on an extremely different scale. sun makes and sells corporate server hardware. they have thus created solid os to go on that server. sun gets a check for $1M when someone puts up a big website, middleware server, or whatever. MS gets $250 when the company adds a new employee and 50$ when someone buys a dell desktop.

      why do you claim ibm acts like a mature company? they've only survived becuase you can't blow up a mountain and expect to have flat ground. there's going to be something left standing. the only comparable company i can find for them is at&t, and afaict, they're still around, but not have to now WORK for their business like the rest of us.

    • Re:Wake up, Sun! (Score:3, Informative)

      by pmz ( 462998 )
      Sun's problem is that they want to be a big monopoly like Microsoft...

      I really don't think so.

      1) Scott McNealy has said so. [usatoday.com]

      2) Sun uses many open standards in its treasured hardware business (SPARC, SBus, PCI, etc.) and its software business (UNIX, POSIX, etc.).

      In general, Sun tries to compete on its implementation of standards with value-added things, such as excellent hardware features and reliability, support services, etc.

  • You've got it all wrong! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21, 2002 @10:59AM (#3044506)
    Pay attention, people! This is SUN! NOT Microsoft! They support UNIX!

    So it's completely impossible that Java is a proprietary platform, because only MS makes proprietary software.

    And if it is, it's completely impossible that Sun would ever abuse their control over that platform, because only MS does that.

    And if they did, it's completely impossible that they are doing it for any reason other than defeating the evil Microsoft!

  • C# Apache Jakarta ports: NAnt, NUnit, Log4Net (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21, 2002 @11:23AM (#3044635)
    Sun should watch what they're doing with Apache or people may leave the Java train in favour of C# which may be perceived to be more open with the Mono project. It is really easy to port Java code to C#. Mono is getting better and better every single day. People have already independently ported Ant (NAnt), JUnit (NUnit) and Log4J (Log4Net) to .NET.

  • JavaFaces? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by krulgar ( 250929 )
    I currently building a few applications using the Struts framework (I assume that's what was intended in the original post "stuts") and I've been really happy with the Jakarta efforts (including ant and log4j).
    I have not read about JavaFaces, nor could I find anything obvious on java.sun.com. If anyone has a bookmark for a good summary page or two, would you mind posting them?
    • http://www.theserverside.com/resources/article.jsp ?l=Portlet_API

  • GPL Java Replacement (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bwt ( 68845 )
    The open source community needs to release a GPL version of Java. There are innumerable projects out there all of which have struggled independently to get to partial JDK 1.1 capability.

    Until there is a highly competitive GPL java compiler with a full set of foundation classes, nobody should be happy about using Java because it is essentially proprietary technology.

    Between GNU Classpath, gcj, jikes, KOPI, Kaffe, Japhar, and a dozen others, its amazing that Sun is so far ahead of what you can do with pure GPL.

  • Daddy, Why is Sun so mean to Apache? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21, 2002 @11:42AM (#3044743)
    Dad: 'cause they're a Java monopoly, Sally. Apache's truly open software threatens to hurt Sun's bottom line.

    Sally: Sun are mean bullies! They should leave Apache alone!

    Dad: Heh heh, yes they should Sally, yes they should.

  • Sun loves JBoss (Score:3, Informative)

    by skelf ( 24005 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @11:47AM (#3044770)
    Marc Fleury of JBoss (at an informal session in Boston last month) said that he is in constant contact with developers and management at Sun, and that Sun secretly loves JBoss, because grass-roots projects like that are just what Sun needs in their fight against M$.

    I also remember him actually defending Sun's charging so much for J2EE certification, but I can't remember what his reasoning was.

  • Not Sun specific (Score:2, Insightful)

    by PierceLabs ( 549351 )
    This isn't a Sun problem specifically - all of the companies that were using OSS to gain marketshare are wrestling with it now. Some of them have blamed Sun (Lutris) for their own inability to make OpenSource work for them. The simple fact remains that no company that needs to make profit in order to stay in business can cater to open source in the same spaces where they are trying to make money. Sun has open sourced Star Office, no biggie - doesn't make them any money really. Sun won't give away or disrupt J2EE license revenue to cater to open source because they make money from this. Anyone who doesn't understand this and thinks that Sun or any other company can just give this stuff away really needs a good class in economics and finance.
  • For all of the conspiracy theorists creating ludicrous examples of why Sun doesn't like Apache, let me put this into simple, obvious terms:

    Now that AOL has given up on selling iplanet as a webserver (Apart from other things.), Sun is still trying to make money off of it.

    Apache is iplanet's biggest competitor. Apache is free, more popular than iplanet, and considered by many people to be better than iplanet.

    Every time someone runs apache on Solaris, Sun sees that as another iplanet sale lost.

    Need any more details?

    • Re:Why Sun dislikes Apache. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pmz ( 462998 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @01:30PM (#3045558) Homepage
      Every time someone runs apache on Solaris, Sun sees that as another iplanet sale lost.

      Then why did Sun package Apache as part of the default install of Solaris 8?

      Solaris now ships with Apache, Perl, and Java. Out of the box, it is a pretty potent web-serving OS. And it can be downloaded for free or delivered to your front porch for about $50US (only Free operating systems are more cost-effective; M$ Windows doesn't even come close).

      iPlanet is expensive enough that it really doesn't compete with Apache directly. Typically iPlanet is used in "enterprise" environments alongside J2EE and Oracle. When a company can throw a ton of money at a big server and Oracle, iPlanet is just the icing on the cake.
    • I think you are being too simplistic. I wonder if you know that Apache webserver is part of every standard Solaris 8 installation. That's right, every bloody box with Solaris 8 running on it, has Apache installed. All you need is load the httpd.

      And, if Sun had all that dislike for Apache, why would it cooperate with the Apache people on Tomcat? Without Tomcat, Apache would be useless to at least half of the customers. Yes, servlets are -that- important. And Sun helped Apache get it's own servlet container, in a big way.

      I know that simplification allows for more Karma, but I appreciate intelligence more. I am sure you can figure out an intelligent version of your post, too.

  • I am sure that everyone here has met an MCSE (or other certified) bonehead who passed the tests but couldn't do system administration in a real world setting to save his life.

    Now admittedly Sun's requirements for J2EE certification are a bit more stringent than those required for becoming an MCSE. But certification can only get you so much. The proof is ultimately in your product. JBoss has received so much attention lately because it is a solid, robust product. The attention paid to its lack of certification quite simply distracts from this.

    Certification is a way for Sun to revamp costs. I don't have a problem with that at all. Lack of certification for JBoss probably means that it won't be used on many enterprise systems for the time being, but that will (and is) changing as it continues to evolve. In the meantime, JBoss will succeed or fail in the marketplace on its own merits. And if and when it does reach "critical mass", it will be all the sweeter because this will have been an uphill battle for the entire JBoss team.

    - Rev.

    • Re:Who CARES about certification? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Pretty simple... if you have an old-line IT manager who went to the "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" school of management, it's a heck of a lot easier to sell an open source project if there's certification to ease his fears.
    • I think you are confusing certification of individuals on a certain programming language or platform as opposed to certification of an implementation of a spec. The MCSE, Sun Java Developer and other certification programs exist to certify an individual's skills. The JBoss issue is about certifying JBoss' implementation of the J2EE spec.
    • Well said. A friend of mine was trying to get me to get "Java Certified" by Sun because you only needed a 70 on the test to pass. Go figure.

  • The Java certification is so cheap. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Petrus ( 17053 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @12:39PM (#3045125)
    I think, that lot of people are unjust casting curses to Sun. It was sun who donated most of Netscape (Mozilla), most of StarOffice (OpenOffice)and other things such as OpenLook even before Linux begun.

    Whether it would happen or not, they have the right to be careful about Java spec incompatibility. Perhaps it really does cost $50k to certify it. While $50k might be a lot for Apache, it is only some 0.005% of what IBM pledged to invest to Linux. Why do not some commercilal vendors team up with IBM to foot the bill for the Apache Java?

    Disclaimer:
    I have no afiliation with Sun whatsoever. I jst watch what is happening. Sun just gives out great software and reaps wrath. IBM is all promisses and is praised all over Linux "community".
    • When you said 'before linux began' I think you meant the more recent widespread adoption of Linux and particularly IBM's involvement? But yeah, I think for being a big company, Sun does decent things for open source. They released OpenOffice which has potential for competing with MS Office. Java is controlled by a community process not changed by the whim of McNeally or Joy. Recently they've pledged to help out in the Linux kernel. While they don't have 1 billion to give out, McNeally did go out on stage dressed up as Tux, which you'll never see Lou do :) So if they percieve that XML and logging are critical and supply that to the their users instead of forcing their users (who might not all know what Apache offers) to go find tools, are they really doing anything wrong? Maybe, but it's a hard call for me. The J2EE certification issue concerns me but I'm interested in what Sun has to say about it. Oh well.


      Disclaimer: I have been employed by Sun, although temporarily. I personally like the company, and might be badly biased. I don't think so though.

  • Go-Mono! (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by Mr. McD ( 166893 )
    If Sun's antics are making you ill, why not help out the folks at Ximian on Mono? It is backed by a REAL ECMA standard and not controlled by one company. Sure it's based on an MS product, but at least MS had the balls to submit it to a standards body and NOT retract it.
    • You guys never give up, do you?

      New readers should start by ploughing through earlier Dotnet discussions, where the usefulness of ECMA's standardization the CLR and a minimal set of classes (around 10% of the total platform) was shown to be nil.

      Miguel should stop chasing something he can never catch and instead join a VM project that can help unify open source efforts rather than fragmenting them further. "Parrot" wouldn't be a bad start.

  • Lessons not learned (Score:4, Insightful)

    by augustz ( 18082 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @01:45PM (#3045721)
    We see companies who promise open source (as sun did for years) or open souce friendliness (as they still do) without actually changing anything in terms of licensing. This has happened to tons of projects, not just with Java. The fact is, listening to the Java Lobby claim something will be an open standard does not make it so. We have standards bodies and the OSI for a reason. Unless it is submitted to one of them or licensed with an OSI license, caveat emptor.

    This comes as absolutly no suprise to me, and I actually don't have huge amounts of sympathy for Apache, after all, Sun appears to be well within their legal rights.

    Despite the anti-microsoft zealots out there, Sun is not the knight in shining armor, but a company that has very cleverly exploited open souce development without being open source, and one which I am convinced would pull every closed source trick in the book in a hot minute if they thought it would benefit them.

    It is staggering, the Apache group has been doing huge amounts of work to make Java a standard, ignoring the fact that the only J2EE Java standard comes from Sun.

    I for one have steared clear of Java for precisely this reason, if it is not a standard there are some clear business reasons why you want to avoid it unless you like having the rug pulled out from under you periodically.

  • So let me get this straight..... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JohnnyCannuk ( 19863 ) on Thursday February 21, 2002 @02:46PM (#3046261)
    ...the organization that created many projects and librarties that have become the de facto standards in the Web and software industry (Apache Web Server etc) WITHOUT any 'certification' is whinning that Sun won't give away free certifications to open source projects like JBoss?

    This is a tempest in a teapot.

    The crew at JBoss don't seem to think the lack of certification is a big deal and they are in constant contact with Sun. I don't think that is the problem. I wonder what is really bothering Apache? I wish some one would post the REAL reason and not a misinformed link to "J2EE considered harmful" - if you check some of the more java focused sites, you can see that the person who started this rant at Apache doesn't know what they are talking about when it comes to J2EE (because, I suspect, the haven't used it).

    My guess is that this is causing "contraversy" here because it is a great story involving:
    1) Apache, everyone's favorite Open Source organization.
    2) Sun - a corporate Behemoth out to make profits, that is not as bad as but in the same league as, MS.
    3) Java - a favorite target here on /. and cause of many flames. Guarranteed to generate posts - especially from the C/C++/PERL/ groupies
    4) Because of 2) and 3) we also get a bunch of ".Net Vs Java" or "MS Vs Open Source" tangents generated, especially when people bring up the Mono project as an alternative to J2EE.

    In other words, this story gives anybody on anyside of any of /.'s favorite issues an excuse to rant and flame, and nothing else.

    There really isn't a story here. Let Apache and Sun solve their differences like adults without all this sensationalism.

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