As a WebObjects developer, I think it would be 'insanely great' if Apple could find a good business reason to Open Source WebObjects. For that matter, I don't really see what would prevent some enterprising developers for making a clone. The back-end parts of WebObjects are already there with there with GNU-Step. The WebObjects specific parts consist of only a dozen or so classes. The TOUGH part would be replicating something like Enterprise Objects Framework (EOF) which is the magical part of the whole system that maps the underlying database to the web application. Sounds tough, but not impossible. In any case, I believe WebObjects is a good model to base an Open-Source Web-Application framework on. Once you have that, you'd use an easy time putting together an e-commerce package.
I think you might be confusing copyright with patents. Here's the deal: A copyright basically has the following terms: You cannot reproduce a significant portion of this work without the persmission of the author. A patent, more or less, means: You cannot use this implementation of this idea without permission of the author.
Unless Sun was able to go through the 'improved' Linux source code and find a 'significant' portion of the Solaris source reproduced there, they wouldn't even get to first base in a court case.
I see this as showing that Sun releasing their source code to the public could not be a way for them to try to hamper the development of Linux over copyright issues.
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As a WebObjects developer, I think it would be 'insanely great' if Apple could find a good business reason to Open Source WebObjects.
For that matter, I don't really see what would prevent some enterprising developers for making a clone. The back-end parts of WebObjects are already there with there with GNU-Step. The WebObjects specific parts consist of only a dozen or so classes. The TOUGH part would be replicating something like Enterprise Objects Framework (EOF) which is the magical part of the whole system that maps the underlying database to the web application.
Sounds tough, but not impossible. In any case, I believe WebObjects is a good model to base an Open-Source Web-Application framework on. Once you have that, you'd use an easy time putting together an e-commerce package.
Ideas? Comments?
I think you might be confusing copyright with patents. Here's the deal:
A copyright basically has the following terms: You cannot reproduce a significant portion of this work without the persmission of the author.
A patent, more or less, means: You cannot use this implementation of this idea without permission of the author.
Unless Sun was able to go through the 'improved' Linux source code and find a 'significant' portion of the Solaris source reproduced there, they wouldn't even get to first base in a court case.
I see this as showing that Sun releasing their source code to the public could not be a way for them to try to hamper the development of Linux over copyright issues.