Name Dropping

I had an interesting day yesterday, some guys from JBoss came over to sell a support package to the project that I am working on. So I found myself, just before lunch, shut in a meeting room hearing the pitch made by a commercial venture on the back of open source software.

I can certainly see that there is money to be made by their business model. In commercial and public sector there is the concept of 'due diligence' hereafter known as 'arse covering'. The support packages on offer provide exactly the right feeling of security for management and customers, in this case backed up by genuine knowledge of the product.

Certain of the more rabid open source fans I have met believe that this is a dilution of their long term goal. At present I have to disagree, because of this commercialisation the rate of development in JBoss is extremely high and that benefits anyone who needs an application server and can't afford the cost models imposed by companies like BEA. I don't know whether a successful business can be established long-term by paid for arse covering, but we will see.

After the meeting I adjourned to the cafeteria to share a coffee with the gentlemen from JBoss and had an interesting time talking to one of the more vocal EJB3 supporters that I have come across. He was very clear that the current 'issues' with JDO are all the fault of the JDO specification team and how they 'snuck out' the candidate specification over Christmas. I certainly agree that it was not a time best calculated to make the right impression. I have a suspicion that the actual cause of the release date was the feeling 'Right let's get it finished and have a good Christmas.'

I have to admire the detachment displayed in discussing how the current situation was in part due to the frictions between a specification driven by large business and a specification driven by a thriving user community. I found myself agreeing that there was room for both specifications. Having more than one persistence specification allows me to exercise one of my dictums: 'The right tool for the right job.'.

My radical proposal to resolve the current problem is to go ahead and put the mechanisms in place for migration from JDO and EJB3, but also state that mechanisms for the reverse migration should be part of the EJB3 specification.