Oracle Kills Commercial Support For GlassFish: Was It Inevitable?

An anonymous reader writes "Oracle acquired GlassFish when it acquired Sun Microsystems, and now — like OpenSolaris and OpenOffice — the company has announced it will no longer support a commercial version of the product. Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. said in an interview the decision wasn't exactly a surprise: "The only company that was putting any real investment in GlassFish was Oracle," Milinkovich said. "Nobody else was really stepping up to the plate to help. If you never contributed anything to it, you can't complain when something like this happens." An update to the open source version is still planned for 2014." GlassFish is an open source application server.

Comments

With all due respect to glassfish

[binaryhermit]

What the hell is a glass fish?

Re:With all due respect to glassfish

[wirefarm]

I figure it might be this little guy:
http://www.theamazingpics.com/transparent-fish/

Re:With all due respect to glassfish

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a stupid app server

Re:With all due respect to glassfish

[hawguy]

I figure it might be this little guy:
http://www.theamazingpics.com/transparent-fish/

Ahh, thanks, it's very clear now!

Re:With all due respect to glassfish

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a stupid app server

What kind of organization or person would use it, and for what? I am not familiar with J2EE and such.

Re:With all due respect to glassfish

[noh8rz10]

they should have come up with a better name. Snapdragon!

Re:With all due respect to glassfish

[Anonymous Coward]

hell, glassfish as a RI of the JEE impl was the first implementing version 6 and also it was the first one using OSGI (apache felix implementation) in its runtime (lots of other AS followed that steps, jboss, smx). even it's some hot girl's email password (older version). how to forget it =)
save glassfish.

Re:With all due respect to glassfish

[Virtucon]

There are still a few out there that use it and it was much more popular when it was Sun who ran things. Now with Tomee, JBoss etc. It's an also ran.

Re:With all due respect to glassfish

[Anonymous Coward]

OSGI

Yay for sucking down 500MB of RAM to start an empty app container.

Re:With all due respect to glassfish

[Bite The Pillow]

More importantly, Oracle is a serial killer. Anyone called Agent Jarreau?

If so, can I have her number? You know, in case I need to find the team?

Re: With all due respect to glassfish

[Anonymous Coward]

It's sounds like you never used it, right?
even the integration solutions that serves as the backbone of cloud based gaming platforms use it. maybe you're the kind of people that think that Java is slow? Or not scalable enough? (Close dot net).

Re:With all due respect to glassfish

[theshowmecanuck]

Pretty much all wrong.

Re:With all due respect to glassfish

[bobthesungeek76036]

More importantly, Oracle is a serial killer. Anyone called Agent Jarreau?

If so, can I have her number? You know, in case I need to find the team?

It might help if you could spell her name correctly. Agent Jareau maybe???

Re:With all due respect to glassfish

[SeaFox]

I figure it might be this little guy:
http://www.theamazingpics.com/transparent-fish/

Ahh, thanks, it's very clear now!

Well Sun recognized how much people appreciated transparency from a company. The Oracle is shrouded in mystery, though.

Re:With all due respect to glassfish

[davester666]

Don't you mean "The Oracle is clouded in mystery, though."...

Re:With all due respect to glassfish

[jellomizer]

I am oversimplifying things a bit, but application servers combined with the language, is used to create web services, which is a web form of remote procedures.

So you can code a procedure such as
public String getname() {return "your name" }
The app server will get all your procedures marked as a web service and their parameters and give a handy dandy XML file to the receiver so they know what to call. Also when you call the web service it formats the XML string to follow a particular standard.

This allows for better scailing of your apps, so you can have web services split across multiple servers so no particular process can slow everything down.

Re:With all due respect to glassfish

[RabidReindeer]

I am oversimplifying things a bit, but application servers combined with the language, is used to create web services, which is a web form of remote procedures.

So you can code a procedure such as
public String getname() {return "your name" }
The app server will get all your procedures marked as a web service and their parameters and give a handy dandy XML file to the receiver so they know what to call. Also when you call the web service it formats the XML string to follow a particular standard.

This allows for better scailing of your apps, so you can have web services split across multiple servers so no particular process can slow everything down.

You're oversimplifying a LOT. Web Services may be this year's shiny, but they're far from the only thing that application servers provide.

Aside from that, web services aren't really expected to be simple remote procedure calls. They tried that with SOAP and found the overhead to be punitive. Web services work best when they are powerful abstract controls, not as simple function implementations.

Re:With all due respect to glassfish

[Anonymous Coward]

> Ahh, thanks, it's very clear now!

Yes, thanks for looking into it!

Re:With all due respect to glassfish

[drinkypoo]

Wishful thinking.

Re:With all due respect to glassfish

[jedidiah]

On the subject of Oracle killing things... it really doesn't matter if anyone is is contributing. That's not what Oracle is about. Oracle is about selling expensive licenses and support contracts. If Oracle can make money in this manner, I doubt that they would care about "who else is contributing".

That justification is just a specious red herring.

It's like they're trying to pretend that they're not the embodiment of Crassus Maximus when everyone already knows better.

Larry is all about how much he can squeeze out of you. If something isn't PROFITABLE, it will get dropped.

Re:With all due respect to glassfish

[Anonymous Coward]

That has largely to do with Oracle's mafia style pricing programs like "Well, how much you got?" and "Because fuck you, that's why."
Oracle treats its customers like shit because it knows it has them by the balls. Transparency would give their customers leverage to negotiate fair prices.

WTF is Glassfish?

[hawguy]

The Wikipedia article is no help for someone that isn't familiar with Java appservers:

GlassFish is the reference implementation of Java EE and as such supports Enterprise JavaBeans, JPA, JavaServer Faces, JMS, RMI, JavaServer Pages, servlets, etc. This allows developers to create enterprise applications that are portable and scalable, and that integrate with legacy technologies. Optional components can also be installed for additional services.

Built on a modular kernel powered by OSGi, GlassFish runs straight on top of the Apache Felix implementation. It also runs with Equinox OSGi or Knopflerfish OSGi runtimes. HK2 abstracts the OSGi module system to provide components, which can also be viewed as services. Such services can be discovered and injected at runtime.

GlassFish is based on source code released by Sun and Oracle Corporation's TopLink persistence system. It uses a derivative of Apache Tomcat as the servlet container for serving Web content, with an added component called Grizzly which uses Java New I/O (NIO) for scalability and speed.

Why would someone choose Glassfish over Tomcat, JBoss, or one of the commercial alternatives? Can someone explain it in plain english without requiring links to a dozen different projects?

How popular is it?

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[IllusionalForce]

I think the important part is that GlassFish is the reference implementation of all Java EE features.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[coolsnowmen]

From my experiance, Glass fish is ONLY used by people following the JEE tutorials from oracle (using netbeans too). It is not a competative-performant-scaleable JEE Application server.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone explain it in plain english without requiring links to a dozen different projects?

I'll try.

How popular is it?

Answer:

GlassFish is used by less than 0.1% of all the websites whose web server we know.

Source: http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/ws-glassfish/all/all

Why would someone choose Glassfish over Tomcat, JBoss, or one of the commercial alternatives? Can someone explain it in plain english without requiring links to a dozen different projects?

Answer: Glassfish is a full Java EE implementation with good NetBeans support that can start and stop very quickly and is appropriate for development. Tomcat and JBoss are better for deployment, since they can better manage larger volumes of traffic. Tomcat and JBoss are also better supported for Eclipse.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[Rhyas]

It's not terribly popular these days but was at one time, and it's still used in a lot of enterprise production environments these days. It was Sun's premier "Application Server" when it came to hosting products like their Portal software, Java CAPS, Access Manager, Identity Management tools, and various other JEE-level applications. It has enterprise level features like clustering, centralized management and deployment, etc. all built into the product. (Has had them for many years, though now you can get similar functionality in things like Tomcat) It was essentially Sun's version of JBOSS, WebLogic, or WebSphere.

It's no surprise that Oracle is drop kicking it though, it's very much a cheap competitor to WebLogic/Oracle Application Server.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[CuriousKumar]

.

From my experiance, Glass fish is ONLY used by people following the JEE tutorials from oracle (using netbeans too). It is not a competative-performant-scaleable JEE Application server.

You seem to have limited experience then. Glassfish is the reference implementation of Java EE standard and therefore it is used in JEE tutorials. BTW, IT IS used extensively in many enterprise application, including very demanding stuff like stock broking and trading (I have designed it for a large customer myself who serve more than million trades a day, so I can speak with some authority). This is a big news exactly for the same reason. There are many enterprise customers who paid money to get commercial support on Glassfish. Now those companies will either have to depend of the community for support or switch to other commercial options like WebLogic or WebSphere or JBoss EAP.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[pinkstuff]

Sure, make that two. I have contracted to a company that used it for an extremely high load banking platform. I shouldn't feed trolls, but couldn't help it.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[symbolset]

People used to use Microsoft Java too.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[2fuf]

Sounds like this is wonderful news for you guys. You both have clients that are loaded with money, and who desperately need Glassfish support for their production environment.

And now Oracle stops offering support? Dude, this is the best business opportunity you'll get in your life. Quit whatever you're doing and start offering Glassfish support yourself. If it's really that big a deal, companies will be all over you.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[Shimbo]

BTW, IT IS used extensively in many enterprise application, including very demanding stuff like stock broking and trading (I have designed it for a large customer myself who serve more than million trades a day, so I can speak with some authority). This is a big news exactly for the same reason.

In your obscure corner of the world, it may be big news. For the 95% of us who've never used it, sorry it's not, really.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel terrible for the banking community. They are so friendly and generous - sadly, even if they pooled all their resources, I doubt that they would be able to come up with a meaningful amount of money to pay for further software development.

I propose we start a fund - right here today on Slashdot!

If we all give what we can, maybe we can help the banking community just enough. It breaks my heart to think of them having to use their own meager funds, no doubt earmarked for charitable works, just to pay the grossly overinflated salaries of some jumped-up software developers.

Won't somebody think of the bankers??!!

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[angel'o'sphere]

Tomcat is only a web server.
Glassfish is an J2EE application server.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[TheRaven64]

There's probably a lot of truth in what you say. Banks tend to be incredibly conservative in their upgrades. I know of a couple that are just finishing their migration from FreeBSD 2.x to FreeBSD 6.x. They didn't even manage to start the upgrade to 6.x until after it was no longer supported upstream, but they pay people to backport security fixes. I know of a couple of others that still do a lot of processing on VMS on VAX, although they do have some Alpha and Itanium boxes. Outside of HFT, performance doesn't matter that much to them, but they really don't like surprises. This is why they tend to be a lot more positive about open source than you might expect from such a conservative industry: they like the idea that you can keep running an ancient platform long after the original vendor goes out of business. Transaction processing volumes grow a lot more slowly than Moore's Law, and unless they need new features they'd much rather keep using the system that they know works with occasional bug fixes when it doesn't than have to switch to something newer.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[JustOK]

99% you mean.

Re: WTF is Glassfish?

[Midnight Thunder]

I have seen a number of projects using Spring and Tomcat. Once you have that combination much of what application servers provided become redundant.

Re: WTF is Glassfish?

[Midnight Thunder]

Tomcat may just be a Java based web server, but once you have Spring or delegating service implementations to other servers, much of what application servers provide become overkill, at least from what I have seen.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[Anonymous Coward]

because glassfish is a fantastic free jee server with all the features you could wish for (even clustering and HA), tomcat is no full fledged jee server, tomcatee doesn't support clustering, JBoss7's admin gui is a joke and commercial servers cost money.

any other questions?

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have designed it for a large customer myself who serve more than million trades a day, so I can speak with some authority).

A million trades a day? A WHOLE million???? Wow. that shows an amazing lack of comprehension of what is meant by "performant" and "scalable"

Come back bragging about your million trades per hour system some time so I can mock you again.

Re: WTF is Glassfish?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not. Java EE 6 has lots of good stuff and Tomcat isn't a container for Java EE 6 unfortunately.

Re: WTF is Glassfish?

[angel'o'sphere]

Yes, I agree. Full fledged J2EE Application Servers are often overkill. However I did not use any since EJB 3.0, so perhaps they are now worth more.

Re: WTF is Glassfish?

[M. Baranczak]

Yes. And it's not just overkill - with a Java EE server, you're stuck with whatever libraries the server provides; if you want to use a different implementation or newer version, it's usually a pain in the ass to make it work. In my experience, the Tomcat approach works a lot better.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[LDAPMAN]

Tomcat is NOT a web server. It is a lightweight application server that provides a servlet container. That servlet container is a subset of the J2EE spec. It is the subset that roughtly 90% of java apps actually need. Most of the applications running on JBoss, Websphere, etc. don't actually use the extra features available on this platforms.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[angel'o'sphere]

Sorry, mister ignorant.
A servlet container is a web server.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[squiggleslash]

Netbeans seems to have better support for it and practically makes installing it mandatory for JEE apps. I actually thought for a while that it was supposed to be Tomcat's successor - Glassfish::Tomcat seemed to be the same as LibreOffice::OpenOffice, but this was not the case.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[LDAPMAN]

No, it isn't. To be pedantic, Tomcat can communicate to clients via HTTP but that is not it's intended purpose. In most real world implementations, a web server is used between the client and Tomcat. The communication between the web server and tomcat is not limited to HTTP.

By your logic ALL app servers are web servers. My comment was in response to "Tomact is only a web server" which is not true.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[angel'o'sphere]

Sorry, not By your logic ALL app servers are web servers

It has nothing to do with me or you.

Seems you don't understand what a servlet is, no problem. Seems you don't understand what a web server is, no problem either.

The communication between the web server and tomcat is not limited to HTTP.

It is not? Wow ... you likely mean the RMI hooks to remote control the Tomcat? Or do you really believe there is a standard to deploy a (web/not web) application on a tomcat that is communicating with the client via non HTTP?

Sorry, read up what a *.war file is, what a servelt is and what a *.jsp is.

Tomcat *IS* a web server, a servlet container, and nothing more.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tomcat isn't an application server (rather, just a servlet container, which is a component of an appserver), it's also hell to configure in comparision (CLI controls and a polished admin panel, vs a shitty admin panel and XML files). JBoss in my experience is neither as lean nor as performant (except on startup/shutdown speed for an empty container), and doesn't scale quite as well.

A bunch of the stuff in WildFly 8.0 has been in Glassfish for quite some time. That said, GF isn't all that popular, at least not among developers, but hey, it's the Java EE reference implementation.

It's sad news, but not surprising. Most of us expected GF to be killed in favour of WebLogic a long time ago.

Re: WTF is Glassfish?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why we have TomEE, which cobbles together a bunch of disparate components to approximate an app server. There's more to JEE than EJB.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[Anonymous Coward]

GlassFish is used by less than 0.1% of all the websites whose web server we know.

Something like 95% of all app server deployments are behind a reverse proxy (nginx, sometimes Apache or IIS). One would imaging it's called "middleware" because it goes in the middle of the stack, rather than at the public-facing end, just sayin'.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[theshowmecanuck]

Trading is a lot more complex than a 'like' on Facebook or posting a comment on Slashdot. The server has a lot more work to do. It's all relative. He didn't say how many servers he uses either. FWIW, I was a dev lead on a system that processed hundreds of millions of records (sometimes into the low billions) per day. But they were pretty straight forward ETL transactions and involved C and Pro*C. Want to mock me too? Go ahead, beat your chest and think you are dominating me. You really can't, because I don't care about you.

Re:WTF is Glassfish?

[coolsnowmen]

Now those companies will either have to depend of the community for support or switch to other commercial options like WebLogic or WebSphere or JBoss EAP.

Jboss, like many Redhat products has free community editions, and pay for supported Corporate editions. Additionally, if your application only uses the JEE api, then migrating from glass fish to EAP should be easy.

Hell has frozen over

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe it. Right there in the summary.

GlassFish is an open source application server.

Re:Hell has frozen over

[Megane]

Me either... that wasn't in the submission, so... a /. editor edited. Wow. And with the answer to the most obvious question, even.

The future is lean

[Anonymous Coward]

For better or for worse, Glassfish has the reputation of being bloated. Tomcat has the reputation of awful developers (they disparage users on the bug tracker). And so on.

The only decent (excellent, actually) webserver I've seen is Jetty. And it's lean, to boot.

The king is dead. Long live the king!

Crap headline

[Anonymous Coward]

I really, seriously don't think it's at all grammatically fair in any way to ask if something was inevitable after it already happened.

Re:Crap headline

[Zontar The Mindless]

You should learn what words actually mean. I am pretty sure that would help.

Re:Crap headline

[mwvdlee]

"gramatically fair"... surely, there must be an award for something like this?

Re: Crap headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Not yet, but now I'm sure that one will be inevitable.

Re:Crap headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Words mean whatever we want them to mean - no one person or group has control of the English language. To attempt such control is, as Orwell warned, an essential step towards Naziism. You can understand why your post may be considered offensive by some.

Re:Crap headline

[drinkypoo]

You can understand why your post may be considered offensive by some.

No, but I can understand why your post is offensive.

Re:Crap headline

[drinkypoo]

I thought more like a ten-year-old who has just discovered Lewis Carroll.

Re:Crap headline

[Anonymous Coward]

At least the Orwell ones don't both with Guy Fawkes masks.

Re:Crap headline

[Anonymous Coward]

More like those smug 5 year old bastards who just discovered Doctor Suess!

Re:Crap headline

[Anonymous Coward]

> Words mean whatever we want them to mean - no one person or group has control of the English language.

Yes, but "inevitable" in this case means "couldn't be avoided," not "purple with orange spots." There's a pretty strong consensus on this one. It's nobody else's fault if they can't figure out what the fuck you think a word means.

Re:Crap headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Words mean whatever we want them to mean

So by the phrase "no one person or group has control" do you mean literally control or actually control?

Re:Crap headline

[HiThere]

This depends on how you understand time, space, and causality.

From my (bizarre?) point of view the multi-world model runs both backwards and forwards, so there is neither a unique past nor a unique future. So inevitable would mean something like "in all likely projections into either the past or the future this would occur". And therefore it's both grammatical and reasonable (WRT understanding) to assert this. Whether it (i.e. Oracle dropping support for glassfish is inevitable). Reasonable (WRT truth) is something I'm not competent to hold a position on.

However, given the nature of Oracle's past behavior, I'm not surprised.

This can't possibly be related to track record?

[tlambert]

This can't possibly be related to track record?

It's CDDL licensed, as Solaris was, and the model is "managed community", the way Solaris was -- what guarantee did any contributor possibly have that Oracle wouldn't do to it exactly what they've done to the Open Source Solaris community? As in, *exactly* what they just announced?

The problem with "managed community" is that the "manager" can yank the rug out from under you at any time.

And who exactly thinks it's fun to work on Java based application server implementations anyway?

Re:This can't possibly be related to track record?

[bobthesungeek76036]

....It's CDDL licensed, as Solaris was, and the model is "managed community", the way Solaris was ....

I can tell you that Oracle absolutely hates CDDL licensing. It was Mission #1 to abolish all CDDL licensing after absorbing Sun.

Re:This can't possibly be related to track record?

[tlambert]

....It's CDDL licensed, as Solaris was, and the model is "managed community", the way Solaris was ....

I can tell you that Oracle absolutely hates CDDL licensing. It was Mission #1 to abolish all CDDL licensing after absorbing Sun.

No doubt; and when IBM bought the startup I worked for around 2000, the missions was "abolish the GPL'ed code wherever it touches on IBM patents", which basically meant yanking the SQUID code out of the InterJet and replacing it with much dumber caching software so that IBM wasn't accidently granting a royalty free license to use those six patents.

My point on the CDDL is that it has as an emergent property centralized control of the community with the company originally licensing out the code, since all contributions back end up with an assignment of rights.

I'm going to guess that Oracle was just as unhappy with the Linux distribution they inherited, and with the GPL on the MySQL code, but at least in those cases, forking was possible, whereas the CDDL pretty much makes it difficult to effectively fork, as the OpenIndiana / Illumos folks have discovered.

drowned

[shentino]

Sun drowned, and oracle was the shark that ate the carcass and after digesting the IP used its bulked up legal muscles to go after google.

Oracle has proven it would rather loot and pillage Sun's corpse than maintain it as a separate brand.

Re:drowned

[Z00L00K]

So what we will expect to see is that sooner or later Java will get the axe too - or be an Oracle internal tool that will cost a crapload of money for anyone outside Oracle to use.

Re:drowned

[BlazingATrail]

Java isn't going to get killed off or cost more than $0 to use, ever. Don't be a fool, wrap your internal tool.

Re:drowned

[mwvdlee]

Sun drowned for a reason.
No buyer, including Oracle, would ever "maintain it as a separate brand".

Re:drowned

[symbolset]

Uncle Larry is not in the "giving stuff away business".

Re:drowned

[Anonymous Coward]

Open-jdk is very much a thing.

Re:drowned

[Anonymous Coward]

> Java isn't going to get killed off or cost more than $0 to use, ever.

In Java? That hot, searing pain and blistered flesh is exactly what you can expect, I've spent the last week cleaning up from some idiot who thought "ohh, it's write once run everywhere, so I can just grab the tomcat7 jar files and shove them in Tomcat 6 applications!!!".

Re:drowned

[dwpro]

You're mixing your metaphors. You can't eat your carcass and pillage it too.

Re: drowned

[Midnight Thunder]

Anything is possible, but at least it is GPL and currently there is a good community supporting OpenJDK. Killing Java doesn't make much sense, since I am betting a good number of Oracle DB clients have their software written in Java and killing Java would mean pissing off those people in larger numbers.

Re:drowned

[tigersha]

Well, Sun was in the "giving stuff away" business and now they are not in business anymore and Oracle still is.

Bankruptcy happens when you get in less money than you spend and you cannot pay your people anymore.
Should the Sun enigneers stay and work for handouts to keep the Java community happy? Out of altruism?

Who knows, Maybe Uncle Larry was right after all.

Re:drowned

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer to call him cousin larry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vbnLYROCj8

Re:drowned

[shentino]

You didn't order it from McDonalds did you?

How earth-shattering is this news?

[mendax]

How many J2EE/EJB containers does the world really need? Certainly the world would be diminished if Oracle killed Glassfish completely because it is, after all, the reference implementation. But dropping commercial support only means that Oracle not going to support it as a commercial implementation. Keep in mind that Oracle also owns WebLogic, a more prominent and I dare say more successful competitor in this arena.

Re:How earth-shattering is this news?

[theshowmecanuck]

Yeah, agreed, WebLogic is pretty good. Unfortunately it's also pretty expensive.

Re:How earth-shattering is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

WebLogic *was* pretty good until Oracle started messing with it. We're migrating to it right now. Some of the bugs I found are nasty. Tursn out they e.g. have re-implemented java.net.UTL's backend, and their support claims the AD plugin is not guaranteed to integrate with AD :-(

Re:How earth-shattering is this news?

[tigersha]

An Aston Martin DB9 is also pretty good. It is also pretty expensive. Same can be said for a lot
of things in this world. What is your point?

Re:How earth-shattering is this news?

[theshowmecanuck]

If you can't figure it out you are a retard or hoping to sound intelligent by making a snide comment. Sorry, you still sound like a retard.

Shitty Answer

[theshowmecanuck]

Here is a better answer (and it's not mine). The 0.1% figure is disingenuous. People normally don't user app servers like Glassfish as web servers. They usually serve back end web services (which doesn't really count as a web server in my book, despite the terminology used), and back end Java Enterprise services (like Enterprise Beans, and Persistence Layer objects). In my experience, while many use Tomcat for web services, it is a pain in the ass to use for any seriously large sized projects. And it is kludgey and tougher to configure unless you like playing with Apache style configuration files (meaning they are about as clear as Apache documentation). Glassfish is built with all the services required and integrated for doing most anything you need to do with an app server, no added packages needed. People who will tell you Glassfish isn't very good are also those who still think Netbeans is no good, when in fact it now eclipses Eclipse for just working without fucking around with adding plugins. And it works very well. Also Glassfish has built in facilities for horizontally scaling/high availability.

Re:Shitty Answer

[angel'o'sphere]

while many use Tomcat for web services, it is a pain in the ass to use for any seriously large sized projects
In my experience everyone uses load balanced Tomcats and Spring. And none of both is "a pain in the ass". So, who wins?

Re:Shitty Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

while many use Tomcat for web services, it is a pain in the ass to use for any seriously large sized projects
In my experience everyone uses load balanced Tomcats and Spring. And none of both is "a pain in the ass". So, who wins?

Look, lots of people love the Apache web server too, and that doesn't prevent us from pointing out that managing an Apache configuration is terrible.

"vi server.xml" doesn't scale, and this is awful http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/manager-howto.html

Are you USING Tomcat, or are you MANAGING it?

Re:Shitty Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in IBM Websphere world in I am lovin it sine 7.5.0.1, I win :P

Re:Shitty Answer

[theshowmecanuck]

I guess you use the Tomcat management console? Doesn't have one does it? If you have 100 servers in a load balanced cluster can you make changes to Tomcat configuration on one server and it automatically propagates the changes to all of them? If you need to redeploy transparently to all servers at once can you do it from one server and then tell them all to move to the new software version at once on Tomacat? Can you add new JMS queues without farting around with config files on Tomcat? No, not just because it doesn't have a management console, it doesn't come with a JMS broker integrated into it. Never mind all the other things is doesn't have integrated. Use Tomcat all you want. I'll use a real application server. And if Glassfish is going to go away because Oracle doesn't like it, I'll switch to using WildFly (JBoss community editions new name). Too bad because as of Glassfish 3.1 and 4 GF is leaner and faster if you ask me. But JBoss is pretty good too, so what the hell. Around now I feel like giving up on Java altogether. Thanks Oracle.

No way!

[Charliemopps]

Oracle bought some software company, provided shitty support for a couple of years, then complained no-one was using or contributing to it and then canceled support for it out of the blue leaving their customers that are using it screwed? eee gads! This has never happened before! Oh wait, that's right, this is what Oracle does with EVERYTHING THEY BUY.

Re:No way!

[Hognoxious]

Oracle bought some software company, provided shitty support for a couple of years, then complained no-one was using or contributing to it and then canceled support for it out of the blue leaving their customers that are using it screwed?

From TFS: An update to the open source version is still planned for 2014.

What about the Sun Identity Management Suite?

[bobstreo]

All I ever used glassfish for was the Sun/Oracle IDM services. It was "different"

meh

[martin-boundary]

"Nobody else was really stepping up to the plate to help. If you never contributed anything to it, you can't complain when something like this happens."

Actually, that raises the question why was it being put out there as open source in the first place? If you're only putting out an open source product _because_ you expect others to contribute, then your priorities are fucked up.

You should put it out there because it might be genuinely useful to others. Don't pollute the open source world with half baked tools that will bitrot and cause people who search for genuine free alternatives to get confused. That actually causes damage by fracturing the communities around the problem domain.

Re:meh

[Anonymous Coward]

which is a business strategy, is it not? what evil entities are good at this? let's see: MSFT, AAPL, IBM, GOOG, ad infinitum

Re:meh

[HiThere]

There's actually no reason to NOT hope that people will contribute fixes and suggest improvements. But if you want that to happen, you need to have a license and project that supports this activity. E.g., the license can't allow you to "take the money and run", or people will be reluctant to trust you.

The CDDL is, IIRC, an open source license (it's been awhile since I read it), and glassfish is thus an open source program. But you can't mingle CDDL code with GPL code...in either direction. And Oracle's management of the project was...well, you needed to trust Oracle. So it's not surprising that few contributed.

If you compare this with successful FOSS projects, things are quite different. E.g., with Python the community is always proposing changes, and discussing whether they are a good idea or not. Guido (BDFL) has the final word, but I can't recall a single time when he's gone against a large majority of the community, either to include or to exclude something. And things are discussed publicly BEFORE they are accepted or rejected. If there are exceptions (beyond bug fixes, and not all of them) I haven't heard about it.

The D (Digital Mars D : Walter Bright) community is evolving in the same direction, and already pretty far along the path. I'm not as much aware of other groups, but the appearance is that they do the same. (Thus the popularity of github.) And of course the Linux community is famous for open discussions that get quite active. (Most others never seem to get as heated.)

OTOH, none of these are commercial activities. Perhaps the old MySQL community would be an appropriate example, but I'm not familiar with it. From a distant perspective, however, they did seem to play things much closer to their chest. Still, Red Hat is pretty open, and they're commercial, so that's not the real distinction.

not true

[george221]

Seems not real...

Was It Inevitable? seriously?

[Gravis Zero]

yes, it absolutely was inevitable. no program or product lasts forever, everything dies.

Startup product name generator

[knarf]

Glassfish, that name must have been generated using a startup product name generator:

#!/bin/bash
 
declare -a ADJECTIVE
declare -a CRITTER
 
ADJECTIVE=(white red blue pink green brown dark light big small tiny earth glass air)
CRITTER=(frog hound fish lizard gator moose monkey whale hippo)
 
echo ${ADJECTIVE[$(($RANDOM % ${#ADJECTIVE[*]}))]^}${CRITTER[$(($RANDOM % ${#CRITTER[*]}))]^}

Feed it a real list of adjectives and critters and you'll be in hog heaven - ehh, sorry, HogHeaven - for years, sprouting startups left and right. Maybe I should post this on HN instead...

Re:Startup product name generator

[Megane]

Someone should pass the output of that script to whois and see how many combinations are already registered. For instance, pinklizard? CHECK! airfish? CHECK! brownwhale? CHECK! (oh wait, brownwhale.net hasn't been registered! better hurry!)

Re:Startup product name generator

[knarf]

Someone should pass the output of that script to whois and see how many combinations are already registered. For instance, pinklizard? CHECK! airfish? CHECK! brownwhale? CHECK! (oh wait, brownwhale.net hasn't been registered! better hurry!)

I fed it a list of ~1400 adjectives, with 'interesting' results...

SnivelingHound, UntidyMoose, PaltryGator, FumblingMonkey, DampWhale - and it only took 15 runs of the script to produce these. Maybe I should rename the script to 'IP Enforcement company name generator script' as the output seems to fit the target.

Re:Startup product name generator

[HiThere]

You left out fire, ice, and thunder.
Also bird, fox, dove, and ape.

Re:Startup product name generator

[tigersha]

The company I used to work at published a journal with Elsevier. They sent us a password that we then passon on to the customur. The password was generated by such a script. Once the password was 'fancyknickers'. It was assigned to a woman.

Re:Startup product name generator

[gmhowell]

Was she a 'go-er'?

OEPE

[msobkow]

I'll use whatever server is bundled with OEPE. I just need one for development and debugging; I'm not interested in the intricate details of different servers. In theory they all use the same APIs, so why should I care what is used for deployment?

MOD PARENT UP!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I shat myself laughing!

You are such a Java apologist

[smittyoneeach]

It was also created to boost chip and disk sales, too.
And frameworks. Don't forget frameworks.

So what

[Anonymous Coward]

I shit on Oracle

Driving the Business Model - OT

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle is in the software business. Glassfish support takes resources away from WebLogic.

Despite supporting OSS back in the 90s when MSFT ruled, Larry's grumblings about OSS recently are hints as to where Oracle is going with this.

Large clients with unlimited funds are using OSS solutions on a large scale.
This (and support/consulting services) are where all proprietary software companies will aim for growth, and they will do and say what they have to in order to drive the business model.

They have no choice.

This, and confusion about licensing is why MariaDb has replaced MySQL in recent distro releases like Slackware 14.1

Remember SCO and the boatload of lawyers? Get ready for a repeat.

As always when TFA's headline is a question

[vikingpower]

No. It was both foreseeable and unavoidable, knowing Oracle's true nature.

Management & Linux

[rsilvergun]

The engineers and tech didn't kill Sun, bad Management and cheap Intel Linux boxes did. Sun should have dropped their hardware division sooner. Why buy 1 $100,000 Sun box when I can buy 5 $2,000 Intel boxes for the same.

Cheap labor didn't help them either. Sun boxes were a breeze to admin compared to Linux, but when wages for high level IT plummeted in the wake of off-shoring and outsourcing saving 20% on your admin's time wasn't worth as much. Heck, he was probably salaried so you could work him as many hours as you needed too :(. Also low TCO doesn't really help when you can't get enough credit to buy what you need up front. That's why Amazon web services is so popular even though the cost for CPU time is nuts.

Hindsight's 20/20 and I think we can all think of 20 things Sun coulda done to stay relevant though. But what it came down to is the Management didn't react to changing times.

Re:Management & Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Bollocks. Jonathan "pony-tailed douchebag" Schwartz killed Sun with his open everything up, give it all away with no business plan besides coasting on hardware sales, which are up since Oracle's takeover I should add. Sun never targeted much below the midrange tier, x86 barely exists beyond the lower-midrange, anything above that is today, dominated by IBM (Power/AIX) and Oracle (Sparc/Solaris).

Re:Management & Linux

[jeremyp]

The engineers and tech didn't kill Sun, bad Management and cheap Intel Linux boxes did. Sun should have dropped their hardware division sooner. Why buy 1 $100,000 Sun box when I can buy 5 $2,000 Intel boxes for the same.

Remind me never to hire you as my purchasing manager.

Idiots are not language specific

[coder111]

I've seen plenty of bad Java code, but then again I've seen plenty of bad non-Java code.

It's not Java's fault that people are using it wrong. It's easy to do the right thing with Java, but it's also quite easy to do the wrong thing and get SOMETHING kinda working. In a way that can be a curse. Bad C/C++ apps will crash and burn immediately quite often, thus forcing people to fix things. Bad Java apps will creep along and be somewhat usable.

On the other hand, you can get something working quicker with Java, and you can get reasonably good results with good design and supervision and a team of mediocre developers. So Java software is quite cost-effective.

--Coder

I doubt that will happen

[coder111]

I don't believe Oracle can kill off Java. Several reasons:

• Oracle is dependent on Java ecosystem. They push enterprise apps now, not just databases. And those apps, at least quite a big number of them is written in Java.
• Oracle is selling Java servers, like WebLogic or Coherence.
• OpenJDK is GPL anyway, and they cannot really close it off.
• Oracle database users often implement their software in Java. Screw up Java- your database sales go down.
• Java is part of Oracle Database.

So for Oracle ruining Java would not make any financial sense, neither short term nor long term. If they have at least 2 brain cells working, they will not do it. Although big companies do not always act rationally.

--Coder

Re:I doubt that will happen

[HiThere]

They can't easily close it, but several applications already object if you aren't running Oracle branded Java (Neo4j, for one).

What they can do is slowly emasculate it, and release libraries under licenses of their choice to fix the problem. If they're at all sneaky about this, there's a good chance that OpenJDK will change in lock step to maintain compatibility. So they'll be able, eventually, to sell those libraries at a fancy price, and simultaneously to keep anyone else from competing. (Since they'll know ahead of time what changes in API are coming. This is an old MS trick.)

So?

[raftpeople]

I'm confused by your comment. Why wouldn't Oracle or any company do whatever they want with a company they just purchased?