IBM WebSphere SE To Be Opened?

JoyToy writes ""AS PART OF its crusade to marginalize operating systems such as Windows, IBM is leaning toward giving the Standard Edition of its WebSphere application server to the open-source community." "

Comments

The browser

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

If IBM wants to give Linux (and other Free/Open Software) a real kick in the pants they can do one thing: Get Mozilla out there Do whatever it takes--lend some programmers, delete all Bugzilla entries labelled "enhancement", hire some hit-men to kill the current managers, whatever.
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Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually working in one of the IBM labs in North America, I can tell you IBM is becoming very very open about embracing the open source movement. This is really just a taste of what might come later. Being a open source supporter aside, I can certainly understand their strategy to move away from proprietary solution to give them an edge over products like Microsoft's Visual Studio... They get better publicity, better 3rd party developers and better software in general. I am very happy with where they are going with this.

Damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

[sirwired]

OK, I am a little confused here... The "Open Source Community" begs companies to release open source software. IBM then announces the opening of the source for a major product. Next, I read crap like this with all sorts of conspiracy theories. What the hell?!?!

Of course IBM wants to dominate the industry. Every public company has a fiduciary duty to it's stockholders to attempt to gain a monopoly position in every market it enters. (Remember having a monopoly is not illegal, just using illegal means to maintain it.)

Next, who cares what IBM's intentions are? So what if they want to dominate hardware and services? Take the source and run! Ignore IBM's pleas to pay them to integrate. Hang up on the marketing rep when he tries to sell you hardware. Once you have the source, what the hell do you need IBM for? If you don't want IBM to be a focal point for change, fork the code!

Don't like "Tivoli Ready Modules"? Don't use 'em! Don't want to use VisualAge? Fine, who is going to stop you?

Exasperated at hair-trigger morons,

SirWired

IBM are a little late here.

[carlfish]

IBM are really running a rearguard action here. There are already two good open-source Java server apps out there, Jakarta and Enhydra, and the currently available ones are significantly ahead of IBM's basic offering in terms of supporting the most recent versions of standards.

If IBM released the EJB container, on the other hand, that'd be cool. There isn't a halfway-decent free-as-in-liberty EJB implementation that I know of.

I work with Websphere Advanced Edition for my day-job and really like it, but I don't think I'd bother with the standard edition even if it were open-source - there's already enough code out there, and Websphere isn't particularly friendly to install or configure on *nix.

On the other hand, IBM have been really good lately about releasing Java stuff to the open-source community. The XML/XSLT packages that they donated to the Apache project are pretty damn funky, for example.
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Re:IBM are a little late here.

[Kerg]

There isn't a halfway-decent free-as-in-liberty EJB implementation that I know of.

Well, there is jBoss, GPL licensed EJB server (supports 1.1). Scheduled for release 1st of September. The CVS version works quite well already.

Re:Dang, Now we got to find something else.

[finkployd]

Do they let you use internet E-mail? I only ask because I don't imagine it's possible to route mail anywhere without hitting sendmail at some point along the line. :)

Finkployd

IBM...

[spankenstein]

IBM is really heading up on my respect-o-meter. Moving to Linux, making a very good JDK, and now Web Sphere. Cool.

You know what I want opened?

[be-fan]

I would like to see Open Source implementations of the following.

OS/2> At least make it free for personal use. The bloody thing is still $200 or so. I mean it only gets used in a small market, so why not free it up? They can't possibly be making much money of it.

SOM> There needs to be a CORBA independant object model on free OSs. Nothing against CORBA, but there needs to be a lighter weight alternative.

OpenDOC> The perfect thing to boost up Linux. Of course both GNOME and KDE are working object models and embedding, but OpenDOC/SOM are both more mature, and a good deal lighter in weight. However, they might have problems opening this up due to the cooperation with Apple.

IT Personals

[mr.ska]

"Mature, international company seeks community support. Knowledgeable in hardware, software, and support, is OSI-curious. Please respond to P.O. Box..."

Re:What is Websphere?

[Delirium Tremens]

• Websphere Standard Edition (WSE) is Apache (currently 1.3.12) + HTML-based customization front-end + a JSP/Servlet. Open-sourcing their work is moderately useless because the enhancement they made to Apache has already been back-ported and their JSP engine is way behind the current spec level and hence not much interesting for developers who want to play with the latest stuff.
• WebSphere Advanced Edition is WSE + an Enterprise JavaBeans container. We slashdotters don't need to know more about it because it is not going to be open-sourced and - to say it politely - it still needs some work (not yet compliant with the EJB1.1 spec, has proprietary features, requires even more memory that M$ Word in auto-saving mode, etc)
• WebSphere Enterprise Edition is WSE (not WAE, mind you) + another EJB server from IBM. The same functionality in two different products: talk about confusing the customer! The license price being outrageously high I have yet to find someone who has ever used it, so I am not going to comment about this one, though I heard it was a (academically) interesting mix of C++ CORBA code and Java objects.

Whoda Thunk?

[brokeninside]

"The problem is that even if what they offer is 90 percent healthy and only 10 percent rat poison, the rat poison is still going to kill you," said Scott Hebner, director of e-business marketing at the IBM Software Group.

Holy Cripes! That could have come straight from the mouth of RMS himself! Who would have ever guessed that a corporate behemoth like big blue could start to grok the true advantages of open source?

Hebner said that should Microsoft gain the acceptance of a major industry-standards body such as the European Computer Manufacturers' Association for its forthcoming C# initiative, IBM would likely place support for C# on a par with Java given Sun's reluctance to make Java a truly open standard.

Now this has got to have both MS and Sun singing the blues. IBM, who currently has the fastest and best java implementation is promising to back C# if it gains status as an international standard. Ouch. Sun would lose its biggest ally on the Java front and MS would see its next attempt at world domination spinning out of Bill G's control.

And this is the part that really rocks my boat,

This point was reinforced in the most recent edition of the IBM annual report, in which company CEO and Chairman Lou Gerstner said that eliminating technology choke points is a key goal for the company.

Perhaps I need to go find a copy of the annual report, but it seems to me that Lou is stating that IBM wants to go full fledged open source to be a pure hardware + services company. I could be wrong, but I don't see what other technological choke points there could be....

Re:Dang, Now we got to find something else.

[VP]

Since the company I work for has a deep distrust of anything open source (they replaced Apache for Netscape Server)

I am sure a smart and visionary company like this can write it's own implementation of WebSphere.

Re:Dang, Now we got to find something else.

[the coose]

Since the company I work for has a deep distrust of anything open source...

So how's the weather in Redmond? ;-)