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Red Hat to Acquire JBoss
tecker writes "Redhat.com has a banner and press release that states that it will be Red Hat that will buy JBoss and not Oracle as previously thought. The press release states "the world's leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire JBoss, the global leader in open source middleware. By acquiring JBoss, Red Hat expects to accelerate the shift to service-oriented architectures (SOA), by enabling the next generation of web-enabled applications running on a low-cost, open source platform." Could it be that a one company server package that will rival Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 and ASP will finally emerge?"
why would redhat buy this?
it already was open source right...
can't they just... contribute to it.
Although I think this is an important development for java developers, I can't really see it really being a rival to Server 2003 and ASP, don't get me wrong I hate ASP and M$, but the simple fact is they have a huge market share, that just doesn't want to move, additionally they have legacy.
I would be interested to know more about the terms of the takeover, I remember reading recently that Marc let the Oracle deal drop because if/when he sold out he wanted his terms and conditions to be met.
GeekServ Unix Consulting Services (http://www.geekserv.com)
Unsubstantiated, unspecific and blatantly unfair comparisons between Red Hat and Microsoft in 5..4..3...2..1...
So they are not buying Oracle then - settling for JBoss must be a bit of a dissapointment.
I didn't know RedHat was going to buy oracle....... ;)
Given that the biggest Linux vendor is going with a J2EE application server are there any implications for Mono and its associated application stack?
In another topic it was pointed out that Novell are not doing particularly well with Linux. Given that they employ a number of Mono hackers are there any implications for Novell and said hackers?
that states that it will be Red Hat that will buy JBoss and not Oracle as previously thought.
I read this, and thought there was speculation that Red Hat was considering purchasing Oracle. Now THAT would have been front page-worthy news.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
... give RedHat an instant "in" on the application server market so coveted by BEA and IBM? This seems like it could be an intersting fit, and would certainly save JBoss from extinction by Oracle (as seems to be the trend).
... and put a lid on Fluery
It is 'Grammar', not 'Grammer'. If you are going to correct others' mistakes, please take the time to proof your own ramblings.
Thank You.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
IKVM http://www.ikvm.net/ is all you need
help this girl... http://oneluckyboy.com/
5-day Chart for RedHat. Someone is happy about the news :)
How does this change anything? Red Hat could have packaged JBoss in Red Hat without purchasing it. Why do two open source products need to be owned by a single company to "rival Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 and ASP"?
Are they now going to benefit from being able to control the direction of JBoss? No. JBoss is an implementation of the J2EE standard.
The only advantage I can see is that they will now have JBoss experts who can tightly integrate the server with the OS (like IIS). But I have to think they could've done that by paying someone to do it for a far cry of the price of purchasing JBoss.
Sounds like money well spent. The site's not even linked from TFA yet jboss.org won't respond to page loads. Very confidences inpiring from a web technology company.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
..well at least a good day if you own RHAT stock, it is up nearly 10% (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=rhat). Let's see what happens at the end of the day.
Red Hat already had some enterprise Java stuff, but the middleware component just puts the icing on the cake. I think Red Hat is simply using this purchase to officially add this to their portfolio. By portfolio, I don't mean "software products", I mean their service offerings. The software has been, and will continue to be, free. It's the brains behind the operation that cost companies money. In fact, Red Hat probably already had engineers who were paid to support customers running Jboss, but now they are the "unofficial official" place to go when you want enterprise, corporate support for Jboss.
It's past time to stop looking at Red Hat as a software company and start looking at them as a service organization. This isn't surprising considering the success their RTP neighbor, Cisco, had as a service organization (and you probably thought they were a network hardware vendor all this time).
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
would be the company that doesnt like this the most. Hp will not care that much, but going up against websphere......
Ack, buzz word overload. By SOA let's assume the writer really means SOAP services. Microsoft's offering for these is ASP.Net and the WSE extensions, ASP simply isn't that good at generating or consuming SOAP. And once you open up your applications to everyone by using a SOAP service then all lock in is gone, and this works both ways. No longer do corporates have to stick to Java or ASP.Net, they can mix and match. You'd hope that this would enable people to concentrate on the best way to do things, but no, it'll just end up in a language pissing match again, thus ensuring the lovely ideals behind SOA go out the window.
I wonder how this will play with the JBoss and Microsoft agreement that was made in September. That deal was for Microsoft to work with JBoss so that JBoss can run better on MS servers. Clearly, having JBoss run better on Microsoft servers is against the interests of Red Hat.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
With Redhat being pretty much the leader in the corporate Linux world, this will hurt Oracle and boost JBoss... it's time for me to start reading up on JBoss. Could this be the start of the re-emergence of Java technologies at the forefront?
Meh.
It may well emerge as a product to rival ASP and Microsoft's Windows Server 2003,
but the big question is, who will place their trust in it?
The product may be excellent, but it needs to be tried, tested and verified in the field before [INSERT MAJOR CORPORATION] will even consider integrating it into their [INSERT ERP/MIS/Whatever] system.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines
... Could it be that a one company server package that will rival Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 and ASP will finally emerge ...
Who knows, perhaps at some point in the future we might find microsoft complaining about anti-trust?
According to this "Linux distributor Red Hat said on Monday that it signed an agreement to buy open source company JBoss for at least $350m, a move that expands Red Hat's product line and adds to its growth potential."
$350m sounds alot! Altough 40 per cent cash and 60 per cent Red Hat stock!
Okay, I know I'm going to have to rebuild some karma here, but it's got to be said.
""Redhat.com has a banner and press release that states that it will be Red Hat that will buy JBoss and not Oracle as previously thought.
I agree when people say that basic problems with grammar and spelling are not a big deal on a place like slashdot. But when faulty grammar leads to a complete misinterpretation of the situation, you have to fix it.
This line says that somebody thought Red Hat was going to buy Oracle.
When your grammar becomes an impediment to understanding, it's time to work on it.
In order to run JBoss on RHEL you'll typically have to install someone's JDK - Sun's or IBM's (or even BEA's JRockit). Cue long discussion regarding open sourcing Java... I wonder how they intend to handle that gap when it comes to packaging and support.
I think this is a better result for JBoss and it's users than Oracle would have been. Still, I think Red Hat will have fun coping with some of the personalities in the JBoss line-up - I wish them luck!
Hmm, doesn't look like I'll be able to get to the JBoss forums today.
I assume this is good news for GCJ and/or Classpath, given Red Hat's committment to free software. Surely they will now devote many resources to making JBoss work reliably on Free Java, then we all win!
No it won't. They are two very different things. ASP classic was "for dummies" and ASP.NET is all about the framework (Web Forms) and the tools. (Visual Studio) On top of that, JBoss is .com terretory while .NET is the darling of the enterprise. There is some overlap, but I think that it's a pretty good generalisation of the markets.
Don't get we wrong, ASP.NET is very capable in good hands, but at the same time, "dummies" can work with it too. The same can't be said about J2EE/EJB or even straight JSP.
Unless it's running on gcj, kaffe, sablevm or the likes, then it's not really an open source platform, is it? And potentially not low-cost in the future.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My grammar-nazi post above should be modded out of visibility. An anonymous coward above made an excellent point. I don't know why I thought there were grammar problems with the original - it's fine. It might seem a little unclear, but there's nothing wrong with it.
I don't usually stoop to picking on grammar and/or spelling. You have my apology.
Being a Java developer I am looking at this as good news. However I am wondering how this impacts the momentum LAMP and RoR are gaining in recent time, both of these use Linux as their prime deployment platform, infact L in LAMP is Linux. Will this pull some potential projects to JBoss/J2EE, projects that some decided they will do using LAMP because they do not want the hassle of configuring JBoss and or Tomcat? Further are we going to see more Hosting services providing support for JBoss as they do today for python,php etc.
Happy that RH and not Oracle is buying JBoss, but disappointed that if you want to listen to RH's webcast of the press conference (going on right now, BTW), you must have either....wait for it....WiMP or Real Player! To add insult to injury, here's the company that's hosting the web cast: HEAD http://phx.corporate-ir.net/ 200 OK Cache-Control: private Connection: close Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 15:36:06 GMT Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 Content-Length: 14287 Content-Type: text/html Client-Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 15:36:06 GMT X-Powered-By: ASP.NET *sigh*
Even if it's stock funny-money, it's still valuation- and it still is largely spendable, just not in the ways most people think of it. Sure you can't sell it all off right away, but you can sell it off in installments as it's typically common shares and it can be used as collateral for loans on other things like houses or new business ventures. It's not like the RHAT shares are worthless, you know.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Looks like RedHat is trying to do Novell one better. And maybe now that Novell-JBoss partnership arrangement won't get renewed?
s p
http://www.novell.com/products/support/jboss/
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1843829,00.a
This old saw has been the bane of the IT industry since it's beginning.
The reality is, that every time they make something for "dummies" (Namely BASIC, COBOL, etc...) they end
up creating a tool that invariably ends up being used properly by few but actual programmers or causes no
end to pain in security problems (VBA, anyone?). If you don't understand how to ask a computer what you
want it to do, you honestly shouldn't be trying to program one- period. Learn how to, or ask someone who
does to do the work for you. All of this trying to make things for "dummies" is an attempt to relegate
the work to someone they can just hire off the street for far less than a professional would do the work
for- and it still doesn't work after 50 years worth of trying.
This sounds elitist, I know. And, it probably is. But, I do happen to have loads of proof to back it up
that all one has to do is look at the history of things to see what I'm getting at. Trying to dumb down
programming tools of any kind is like trying to dumb down an arc welder or a metal lathe- you can only go
so far before you cause serious problems with safety anyway or make it worthless for the application in
question.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Could it be that a one company server package that will rival Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 and ASP will finally emerge?
Short Answer: No.
Long Answer: Yes. It is going to take a lot more than the purchase of one relatively small company (when compared to the size of Microsoft). I believe it's a long road ahead before Microsoft will be debunked. I do believe that one day it'll happen, just not as fast as some might hope.
I agree. This doesn't seem like such a big win to me. I have used JBoss for multiple applications, but I'm in the mood to switch to Geronimo in the future.
Red Hat is not in RTP exactly, it is on NC State University's Centennial Campus.
/nitpick
Can we ease up on "enabled" or at least restrict it to one use per sentence.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
What, exactly, is JBoss?
Unpleasantries.
"I bet that Red Hat will start offering a consolidated support contract that will offer support for both JBoss and Red Hat when you are running JBoss on Red Hat."
"Official Support" has been one of my biggest obstacles trying to sell OSS as a consultant. I work on whatever platform my customer dictates, but I always try to make a strong pitch for OSS. 90% of the time, the customer refuses. Why? It is *always* support.
Yes, yes, I know that you can buy support for just about any major OSS application, but I think consolidation can be the key. At least a few of my past "inflexible" customers would have accepted an OS/AppServer/DB combination if it all came in a nice supported package. (Think "Redhat/JBoss/RedHatDB")
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/ccvs/
JBoss might be a different product and different market but it makes me wonder if JBoss with end up like CCVS. Red Hat purchased another opensource project/product a while ago called CCVS( Credit Card Verification System ) and converted it to their proprietary license before later killing the product couple years later. They told their existing customers they'd be supported til the end of their contract by a 3rd party( mainstreetsoftworks.com ) and that MainStreet Works had a replacement product( also proprietary ).
If you've ever looked for GNU/Linux based CC processing software, you know how long and unsuccessful the search was/is.
There's definately a larger market for JBoss but the results could be the same in the long run if Red Hat can't market the product to profits. They are not a friend to Open Source when they do these kinds of things and it also shows/helps Microsoft when they do this... IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Red Hat doesn't have a great history WRT buy-outs: just use google, to see the companies that have been "eaten" and then pooped out.
Ah, it does my heart good that someone at least remembers CCVS. Extra points to anybody who remembers seeing the version we had that could run on a Palm Pilot (and good luck getting Red Hat senior management to understand the potential of that product...) That said, I have one minor correction to make: CCVS was designed to be partially open source, but the heart of the system, especially the protocol modules, were always closed source, due to contractual obligations with the payment networks whose protocols were proprietary. In practice that amounted to the bulk of the product being under some closed source, well documented APIs, with a growing layer of open source examples of how to integrate those APIs. It was a situation analagous to providing proprietary drivers for hardware. And yeah, this was at the same time that Matthew Szulik would tell the press that Red Hat was and always would be entirely open source (Stronghold, Apache with SSL support, was also closed source at the time). We always wanted to make a completely open source protocol module that would show people how to implement a module supporting a new protocol for themselves, but that would have required some not-insubstantial work and never happened - before the Red Hat acquisition the constant demand from customers was for more protocols, and after the acquisition there was never management support for doing anything else. Anyway, suffice it to say that the situation with JBoss will almost certainly be much more like the situation with Cygnus than the one with HKS / CCVS. I don't think senior management at Red Hat ever had a very good understanding of what it took to succeed with CCVS (and the rest of the low-end commerce concept), until well after the acquisition - and once they did they were unwilling to make the kind of investments that were necessary. The key thing is that JBoss is a stable, well established company with some serious cash flow. HKS was a middle stage startup with a working product and a small customer base, but its business was still in need of a good bit of investment at a time when Red Hat was not willing to spend much cash.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Why would I want to use JBoss instead of Oracle's own Java app server? Or Apache's?
--
make install -not war
I wonder if they will build it on the SUN JVM, or on the GNU JVM that currently ships with Fedora.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Wnn't this move put RedHat in a conflict with IBM, one of their most important supporter?
For example, RH promoted a few years ago Red Hat Database (=Postgresql), which conflicted with Oracle, they've put it on silent a few months later.
The "editors" at Slashdot aren't really editors, they're a bunch of Perl hackers who happen to run a leading news and discussion site. They're never going to develop the skills to avoid silly mistakes like "[as I was] going through the door, the computer beeped", because writing and editing aren't among their career priorities. Lots of people think this is just a matter of memorizing a bunch of grammar and style rules, but it's really more a matter of developing an ear for good language, so that whenever you hear/read a problematic phrase, it jumps out at you.
What they really need is an in-house language nazi. Hey Rob, my current contract expires later this year!
It'd be awesome if they make JBoss able to be run with GCJ like they do other Java things. It's pointless to call something Free Software but require proprietary code to run it.
My girlfriends brother was looking into a job at the USPTO. I said, "that's cool, you should start rejecting almost everything as most are so damn obvious. He replied that would be stupid for him to do as he gets a "bonus" for every 1000 or so patents he "puts through."
...Red Hat that will buy JBoss and not Oracle as previously thought.
I'm SOOO relieved Red Hat will not be buying Oracle at this time!
I can't imagine RedHat shipping a non-GPL database at this time.
Ah, it does my heart good that someone at least remembers CCVS. Extra points to anybody who remembers seeing the version we had that could run on a Palm Pilot (and good luck getting Red Hat senior management to understand the potential of that product...)
That said, I have one minor correction to make: CCVS was designed to be partially open source, but the heart of the system, especially the protocol modules, were always closed source, due to contractual obligations with the payment networks whose protocols were proprietary. In practice that amounted to the bulk of the product being under some closed source, well documented APIs, with a growing layer of open source examples of how to integrate those APIs.
It was a situation analagous to providing proprietary drivers for hardware.
And yeah, this was at the same time that Matthew Szulik would tell the press that Red Hat was and always would be entirely open source (Stronghold, Apache with SSL support, was also closed source at the time).
We always wanted to make a completely open source protocol module that would show people how to implement a module supporting a new protocol for themselves, but that would have required some not-insubstantial work and never happened - before the Red Hat acquisition the constant demand from customers was for more protocols, and after the acquisition there was never management support for doing anything else.
Anyway, suffice it to say that the situation with JBoss will almost certainly be much more like the situation with Cygnus than the one with HKS / CCVS. I don't think senior management at Red Hat ever had a very good understanding of what it took to succeed with CCVS (and the rest of the low-end commerce concept), until well after the acquisition - and once they did they were unwilling to make the kind of investments that were necessary.
The key thing is that JBoss is a stable, well established company with some serious cash flow. HKS was a middle stage startup with a working product and a small customer base, but its business was still in need of a good bit of investment at a time when Red Hat was not willing to spend much cash.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
The JBoss/Microsoft announcement was more about interoperability between Microsoft server products (.NET web services, Active Directory, SQL Server, Ops Manager) than it was about "running well on Windows".
It also seemed to be mostly a PR move -- "we're announcing that we'll some day announce something of substance"....
-Stu
Sometimes vendors overdo the "dummy" aspect, but there's no doubt that we're more productive at developing today because of higher level languages and more sophisticated tools. Some might argue this "dumbs down" programming, but I don't think that's the point, the point is to automate manual / rote chores that are often error-prone and better handled by a computer (most of the time). Memory management & garbage collection being an important example.
-Stu
No longer do corporates have to stick to Java or ASP.Net, they can mix and match. You'd hope that this would enable people to concentrate on the best way to do things, but no, it'll just end up in a language pissing match again, thus ensuring the lovely ideals behind SOA go out the window.
.NET remoting in particular isn't designed to be interoperable, whereas ASP.NET and WSE are better at it -- but SOA is much broader than just SOAP or even HTTP.... it can apply to most messaging systems, or even databases, or even regular flat file transfers, so long as an appropriate contract is defined.
But the idea of SOA is to allow heterogeneity to proliferate -- to allow mix & match. It's the old saw of separating interface from implementation.
Certainly, SOAP web services can be done wrong --
-Stu
The acquisition of JBoss is a big step forward for Red Hat because it puts them squarely in the middleware market which they lacked before. Not only does it head off a likely purchase/shutdown by Oracle of JBoss, it vaults Red Hat over such companies as BEAS in a key market sector. This is why, (for those who pay attention to such things) Red Hat stock moved up on Monday, and will probably move considerably higher. RHAT is a very strong company now and this makes it stronger. All the better to keep Microsoft and Oracle at bay.
The examples you gave have their own sets of problems, depending on what you're trying to accomplish.
In the real-time (soft or hard) context, the Memory Management may/may not cause a problem depending on how it's implemented and how it's used. The GC will cause you no end to issues in timing, etc. and is abjectly useless
in that context. Again, use the right tools for the job- so many people keep trying to use a hammer to drive
screws into things.
To be sure, if you're making an end-user application that doesn't have real-time issues, all of the memory
management and GC features are a boon- and honestly so. I do Java and Mono after all- and will choose it
as a first choice in many contexts. But, there is no way to say that GC will ever be suitable to task
for all contexts- and you have to be careful with your memory management tricks. AND all of the above doesn't
take into account that all this late bounded automation of memory handling that Java does is resource intensive-
for all the claims of Java being faster than C++ and C in the benchmarks doesn't deal with when the rubber meets
the pavement. I've seen the 3D Java game engines in action. The ONLY game to this point in time that doesn't
need an Uber-box to play real framerates with the 3D is Tribal Trouble- and they don't have very high polygon
counts at all. The others crawl at 15fps peak on a machine that weighs in at 40fps at 800x600 on DooM3 and
Quake4- that's NOT very impressive, really. Proof positive that Java isn't suitable for all tasks- sorry.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas