JBoss Group Developers Walk Out

An anonymous reader writes "According to The Inquirer, 'seven consultants for The JBoss Group publicly announced the immediate termination of their contracts and the foundation of their new company, Core Developers Network.'"

Comments

some faces to those names

[ramzak2k]

Here are the faces behind those names in the article.

Re:Am I missing something?

[wolpert]

Yes, you are missing something. JBoss as a product is the best J2EE open-source server available, and a product that competes with WebLogic and WebSphere big time. (And quite well, I might add, with the clustering support working in most environments just fine.) The consulting group was the method for supporting the open-source product, so this may impact development, though I'm unsure as to how much impact it will have.

This is like saying, oh, some Apple developers left to start BeOS. Hopefully with better results. Is that news? (Now, I know the folks say that they plan to continue work on JBoss, but we'll see how long that lasts, or if the end up forking JBoss too.)

Its kinda like XFree86 being forked... only different. ;-)

some insight...

[HBI]

My girlfriend used to do web site updates for the Jboss group (actually, she worked for Marc Fleury and his wife, listed as Nathalie Mason-Fleury on the website, director of marketing). She was responsible for most of the bio information going up on the site, as well as doing updates to same, updates for whatever conventions they were hosting/doing, etc. She was fresh out of a 4 year CS degree and needed a job and in this market, she took this web jockey gig.

The Jboss crew uses a CVS repository to manage their web site. It sounded fairly dumb to me when I heard it, but I suppose they feel the need for control and verification of who is making what change to the site. Now, she had never done any work with CVS before - she codes a bit in real languages but hasn't worked on any large projects. So she had to ask some help from the Jboss people on how to use CVS.

The developers, Dain for instance, were incredibly helpful. She was able to snag them on AIM at just about any hour of the day or night for whatever little questions she had about their (often malfunctioning) repository. Marc Fleury and his wife, on the other hand, were not. They were demanding, placing calls in the wee hours for changes, and expecting 1-2 hour turnaround whenever they called. When asked questions, more often than not, Mr. Fleury would take a fit on her. She asked the developers about this and one in particular volunteered that "He's an asshole to everyone, not just you".

Eventually she stopped dealing with them because they just sucked too badly to work for. Low pay, rude behavior and weird hours make for a bad mix. I'm sure they hired someone else who was more masochistic perhaps.

A close friend of the Fleurys (she knows them socially in Atlanta) made the comment recently that Marc owns his own company because he would find it impossible to work _for_ anyone else due to his attitude. I suggest that the recent defections might have something to do with the aforementioned.

On a positive note, Mr. Fleury has found a way to make money off of an open source project. I suppose that deserves kudos. I've known a few businessmen who, while they knew how to make money, were unable to keep the business operating long term because they made strategic errors or alienated people. I suspect Mr. Fleury is going to fall into that category. Maybe he'll learn some lessons for his next business (he's the kind of guy who will assuredly hit the ground running no matter what happens)...