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JBoss Founder Hard-Nosed About Open Source

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hand-that-feeds dept.

Infonaut writes "In this Business Week interview, JBoss founder Marc Fleury refers to "hobbyist" Open Source contributors and makes the case that "no one is going to work for free." Fleury dismisses people who contribute for something other than money as "Hari Krishnas" and makes reference to the "hippie dream". Fleury's sharp, profit-focused approach has brought him success, but isn't it in some sense built on the shoulders of the hippies and hobbyists he seems to scorn?"

13 of 423 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Only one draw-back to open-source. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Err... you "obeosuly" have no idea of what you are talking about.

    Opensource innovates just as much as anything else. Everything from filesystems such as Riser to decenterlized p2p systems such as Gnutella or even bittorrent for that matter.

  2. I disagree by Zebra_X · · Score: 2, Informative

    but isn't it in some sense built on the shoulders of the hippies and hobbyists he seems to scorn

    Not really. Java has continued to be a thorn in the side of the GNU camp because of it's licensing issues. His product has been built from the ground up and serves as a platform for the deployment of non-free software. Thus, he does not stand on the shoulders of those he scorns.

  3. THIS IS THE SAME JBOSS by rerunn · · Score: 3, Informative
    This is the same jboss that had its core set of developer walk out on Fleury a couple years ago:

    http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/04/22 12228&tid=108

    And yhea its the Inquirer but still worth a read:

    http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=9504

    JAVA DEVELOPER'S JOURNAL Editor-in-chief Alan Williamson has recently awarded Marc Fleury with the title "JBoss's own worst enemy" in his blog (http://alan.blog-city.com/readblog.cfm?BID=77874) . It appears that there were some polling inconsistencies with the JDJ awards and that the JBoss Group's CEO gave Williamson quite the verbal lashing in a letter earlier this week. Williamson reacted by publishing Fleury's email in his blog.

  4. Not as bad as story summary makes it sound by Doug+Merritt · · Score: 5, Informative
    The story summary pissed me off, but the actual article is nowhere near so bad. A key quote:

    This guy in the front row says "You've got to stop banging on people whose motivation is something other than money." There's always a Hari Krishna in the audience: "It's illegal to make money at this. We're all garage bands, and you sold your soul to the devil for a handful of dollars." So I go, "Have you contributed anything?" and usually they say no and I stop it there.

    Turns out the guy is the founder of a pretty significant chunk of Linux, so Point A goes out the door. So I say, "You are what I call amateur open-source or hobbyist open source, which is you have a job and then you do this because that's your passion." And then somebody in the audience yells "You mean amateur open source as opposed to asshole open source?"

    So there's always that. It's normal. There are always a bunch of amateurs because they've never made money at it, and it kind of pisses them off that there was a way to do it.

    He's not making a blanket statement about open source developers being Hari Krishnas, he's talking about hecklers in his audience.

    --
    Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
  5. Re:Only one draw-back to open-source. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    "Was the first implimentation of a Web Browser (Mosaic) open source or coompany derived?"

    It was definately not open source, Netscape(Mozilla) only became open source after IE bitchslapped it.

  6. The Fleury Method(tm) by jdfox · · Score: 3, Informative

    1) Astroturf wildly to market your product, on the assumption that your customers and fellow developers are idiots
    2) Issue a mealymouthed pseudo-apology, when you get caught
    3) Wait a year, then publicly call your fellow OSS developers "hippies" and "Hari Krishnas"
    4) ??
    5) Profit!!!

  7. Re:the art of open source by Rick+and+Roll · · Score: 3, Informative
    People choose art over money in the software world so they can do whatever they want with their projects. OpenBSD's Theo De Raadt is a good example of this. Here's an excerpt of a recent interview recent interview:

    Q: Could you elaborate on why the OpenBSD team is so committed to releasing its software free of charge and free of restriction?

    The first thing to recognize about OpenBSD is that there are about 80 developers and we do OpenBSD for ourselves only. Lots of other people use OpenBSD, but we use it for ourselves. It's just for ourselves--and that means I want OpenBSD to run on everything I've got. I want OpenBSD to work no matter what things come along in the future. This means that we have to have an outside community that will help us with supporting new devices and new technologies. We can't be too 'fringe.' So that means we have to have a user community. But we have a user community only because it benefits us, ourselves.

  8. Only one draw-back to your post by lheal · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm not going to complain about your spelling, since you might not be a native English speaker.

    On the other hand, you're just wrong.

    >They do not innovate w/ new tech-ideas.

    Yes, they do. For instance, did you know that the first web browser to do page layout decently (in an "innovative" fashion: you put the pictures in line with the text!) was called NCSA Mosaic. It was distributed with source code. A company called Spyglass bought the rights to it. Microsoft used Mosaic as the basis for IE. For reference, in your browser window, click "Help -> About IE".

    The web site you're on now is being served by an open source product called Apache, which was based on the NCSA http server. Apache has many innovative features, not the least of which is its open architecture (making it possible for Apache to run programs written in several different programming languages).

    The page layout of this site is done by a program called Slashcode, an open source program. Comment moderation, and meta-moderation, are two technical innovations that came from this open source package.

    It's written in PERL, through the Apache mod_perl plugin. PERL was a truly paradigm-shattering open source programming language. PERL was designed for handling strings and administering computer systems. When the web exploded, PERL turned out to be almost perfectly suited to it. Even without the web, PERL is great for doing sysadmin work.

    The list would go on, and on, and I am not doing it justice by listing only a few.

    The point is that all of the really innovative stuff comes from open collaboration. Closed source people are forced to look at what the market wants, and with one finger in the air can't be truly innovative.

    --
    Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
    1. Re:Only one draw-back to your post by man_of_mr_e · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually, no. I didn't know that. And neither do you.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser)

      "However, despite persistent rumors to the contrary, Mosaic was never released as open source software during its brief reign as a major browser; there were always constraints on permissible uses without payment."

      --
      If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
  9. Sure nobody wants to work for free--- BUT. by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 3, Informative

    Who said we are working for free when what we are really doing is bartering.
    I work on a video editor, or the docs for openoffice, or beta testing for Blender.
    In return you do something similar.
    In return, I get a $500 package (openoffice) free without needing to pay taxes.
    In return, I get access to code that does 90% of what I want so I only have to write the 10% instead of 100%.
    OSS moves ahead because it doesn't have to care about -cash- payments. It can take almost as long as it wants on any project and when it gets "good enough" then it starts eating into the commercial software it compets with.
    I passed a key marker in the last 3 months - I no longer install Office on all my boxes. THat followed another key point 6 months ago when I said the default programs were Writer and Calc instead of Word and Excel.
    Now I'm seriously looking at Umbuntu and it's very likely I'll be using it 100% on one box.
    Anyway- back to my basic point- even businesses can benefit enormously from open source. They get access to code 90% written, write the 10% they need and contribute it back to the stream. This allows them to make deadlines they otherwise could not and to get software that works (bypassing a huge amount of risk) that they only have to tweak.

    And some of them are STILL greedy and try to take the free code and hide their changes (fortunately they are getting busted lately).

    It's not that hard folks- get thousands of dollars worth of free software- make your business profitable and give just a little bit back.

    --
    She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
  10. Re:Ridiculously mischaracterized article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    ...he should of kept...

    should've == should have
    should've != should of

  11. Fleury != Politic by Bob9113 · · Score: 2, Informative

    makes the case that "no one is going to work for free."

    For those of you who aren't familiar with Marc Fleury, he is the stereotype of the maveric, much like many of us. He's used to being the smartest guy in the room, he's used to being right whenever someone disagrees with him, and he doesn't soft peddle the fact that he thinks he's always right. There's an upside and a downside; people don't follow the wishy washy, but maverics tend to come off as assholes.

    All that to say, this is just vintage Marc. His view is the only credible view in his world. It has cost him some important allies (eg: his entire core development team last year), and has won him others (eg: lots of venture capital). It will continue to be his hallmark.

    --
    Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
  12. He knows no more by jd · · Score: 2, Informative
    Than Steve Jobs did when he said that the days of garage delopers was over. In the 1990s. He nearly went bankrupt, going with that attitude.


    Different cases, sure, but the same short-sightedness and same origins - the "I'm better than you, 'cos I'm richer".

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)