How IBM (and Open Source) Won eBay

DemonBrew wrote to us with a new article in Business2 how IBM beat MSFT, Sun, BEA Systems to win the contract for the new eBay. Cool part is that it's based on Websphere, which has major open source components.

Comments

Have you heard of?

[md17]

JCP - Java Community Process
To take right from their website:

The JCP is the way the Java platform evolves. It's an open organization of international Java developers and licensees whose charter is to develop and revise Java technology specifications, reference implementations, and technology compatibility kits. Both Java technology and the JCP were originally created by Sun Microsystems, however, the JCP has evolved from the informal process that Sun used beginning in 1995, to a formalized process overseen by representatives from many organizations across the Java community.

Come on people, do your research before you blab this stuff.

Re:Websphere, Open Source, WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

The EJB and clustering support in Websphere is not open source either.

Closed source parts:

Servlet Engine

EJB

JNDI

JDBC pooling

Clustering

Open source parts:

Web server (Apache) assuming they're using Apache.

XML (xerces, xalan)

Kind of funny that anyone is clueless enough to think that WebSphere is open source.

Re:Open Standard and Java

[kinkie]

CIFS per se is an open standard. What makes it difficult to interoperate with Microsoft's implementation of it is that CIFS is used by Microsoft to tunnel RPC calls which do very important tasks (even basic stuff like looking up an user SID to perform an ACL match).
Without those calls filesharing should still be possible, but with VERY limited functionality.
The problem is that (in true Microsoft fashion) there's HUNDREDS of calls, and each of those can have LOTS of variants with widely different results. See any network-related MSDN-documented
information function call. Often you'll find a parameter which is an "info level" or somesuch. Change that parameter, and you change the type of the returned values and obviously the returned data. See this call for an example.
Microsoft's interface design method appears (from the outside) to be something like this:they think in advance, and then they define those interfaces which they MIGHT need five years in the future, and place stubs until then. This has the side-effect that their interfaces have everything AND the kitchen sink, thus the hundreds of calls.

Re:Websphere, Open Source, WTF?

[rmjiv]

umm Websphere is based on Apache Webserver

umm, -5(Wrong)

IBM does have a product called IBM HTTP Server, which is a rebrand of Apache Webserver with some configuration tools and (iirc) a different SSL engine. However, WebSphere is a totally different product with different functionality (application server vs. web-server). They are bundled together, but are different.

WebSphere does use Xerces and Xalan which are Apache projects for XML processing. So do most of the Java application servers, though.

FYI, IBM is a major supporter of the Xerces and Xalan sub-projects, and is a major supporter of the Jakarta Apache project, providing developers and code. So maybe they have a better claim on being "more" open source than other Java Application servers. This I leave up to others to decide.

rmjiv