In one of the first results of its $1 billion purchase of MySQL, Sun Microsystems has packaged the popular open source database with its GlassFish application server and is offering the two as a $65,000-per-year bundle.
Sun has struggled so far to field a competitive application server, the software that handles thousands of Web site requests at a time, obtaining a response from a running application or database, and feeding it to all the users who wanted it. It's one of the pieces of middleware that makes a common application scalable to Web dimensions. The dominant commercial products are IBM's WebSphere and BEA Systems' (now Oracle's) WebLogic, followed by Oracle's homegrown Oracle Application Server. JBoss has been a fourth contender, dominant among the open source contenders.
But Sun is back, launching a "disruptive" play that seeks to pair up GlassFish with the hugely popular open source database it purchased in late February. Its chief target is not fellow open source supplier JBoss, now a division of Linux distributor Red Hat, but the traditional commercial software providers that charge license fees and maintenance costs for their products.
Oracle has its own ambitions for a greater share of the Java application server market and has invested heavily in Oracle Application Server and in purchasing BEA Systems for $7.2 billion last January. If Sun and Oracle emerge as head-to-head competitors, it will be carefully watched how well they continue to work as partners. Oracle controls one of the key storage engines in MySQL, InnoDB, which it acquired by buying a Finnish firm, Inno Oy, in 2005.
GlassFish is both a standard -- it's the reference implementation of an application server for Java Enterprise Edition 5 -- and it's a popular open source project hosted by Sun at http://java.sun.com/javaee/community/glassfish/.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Friday, June 6, 2008
Google silences Android critics
Last month, on the official Android discussion group, David "Lefty" Schlesinger posted a message that questioned the open sourciness of Google's fledgling mobile platform. And he was promptly muzzled by Google developer advocate Dan Morrill.
"Now I'm moderated," says Lefty, an open source guru with Access, the Japan-based mobile software outfit. "I can't post anything unless Google approves it first."
Granted, it wasn't the most diplomatic of messages. It actually quoted from The Reg. And Lefty had been floating such notes for quite awhile. In the end, he was probably muzzled for reasons that extend beyond his views on software development. But his story is still a nice metaphor for Google's relationship with certain parts of the open source community.
Google refers to Android as an open source platform. But at the moment, it's not. The company is privately developing this "complete mobile stack" in tandem with 34 mobile-industry partners, and it won't actually open things up until version one debuts on phones sometime later this year. Lefty, like other hard core open source types, thinks this is a tad disingenuous.
"They want to maintain a facade of being non-evil open source guys," Lefty tells us. "But they really want to retain very tight control over this. They're being proprietary while maintaining an appearance of open source."
Morrill didn't respond to our requests for comment. But last week, during a press conference at the Google I/O developer gathering in San Francisco, when we asked Android product manager Andy Rubin about these claims, he argued that many open source projects start out closed. And he reiterated that once version one is released, the platform will truly be open.
Or at least, most of it will be open. He did say that code related to "certain Google-specific services" will remain closed.
Like many developers who turned up at I/O, Lefty also complains that Android uses its very own Java virtual machine. "So not only have they strayed away from mainstream open source," he told us. "They've strayed away from mainstream Java. They're forking projects all over the place."
"Now I'm moderated," says Lefty, an open source guru with Access, the Japan-based mobile software outfit. "I can't post anything unless Google approves it first."
Granted, it wasn't the most diplomatic of messages. It actually quoted from The Reg. And Lefty had been floating such notes for quite awhile. In the end, he was probably muzzled for reasons that extend beyond his views on software development. But his story is still a nice metaphor for Google's relationship with certain parts of the open source community.
Google refers to Android as an open source platform. But at the moment, it's not. The company is privately developing this "complete mobile stack" in tandem with 34 mobile-industry partners, and it won't actually open things up until version one debuts on phones sometime later this year. Lefty, like other hard core open source types, thinks this is a tad disingenuous.
"They want to maintain a facade of being non-evil open source guys," Lefty tells us. "But they really want to retain very tight control over this. They're being proprietary while maintaining an appearance of open source."
Morrill didn't respond to our requests for comment. But last week, during a press conference at the Google I/O developer gathering in San Francisco, when we asked Android product manager Andy Rubin about these claims, he argued that many open source projects start out closed. And he reiterated that once version one is released, the platform will truly be open.
Or at least, most of it will be open. He did say that code related to "certain Google-specific services" will remain closed.
Like many developers who turned up at I/O, Lefty also complains that Android uses its very own Java virtual machine. "So not only have they strayed away from mainstream open source," he told us. "They've strayed away from mainstream Java. They're forking projects all over the place."
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