Exadel finds a different way to open source
Summary: When there is free scut-work to do (and there always is) who will do it, RedHat or Exadel? Fleury famously complained of a lack of RedHat support. Was that just a tactic by RedHat to get rid of him (I was once a victim of such a dodge) or is RedHat really a Tom Sawyer outfit, talking others into whitewashing its fence?
RedHat's deal with Exadel is an important watershed in the history of open source business models.
A careful reading of the release shows that RedHat is not buying Exadel, nor is it interfering with its business. Exadel has found its big bucks come from building sites like Mortgage.Com and other scaled applications for the Fortunate 500 worldwide.
RedHat isn't buying Exadel's software, either. Instead it's going to run open source communities for Exadel Studio Pro and RichFaces, as well as the Ajax4jsf project, under the JBoss name.
In the past service bureaus would be acquired, or software would go open source. This is the first time I've seen software go open source under another company's name, with the aim of expanding its community.
Yet this deal could be a win-win. It's likely that RedHat will contract with Exadel to help provide support for the new tools. RedHat also gets a bump-up in its JBoss community efforts following the departure of Marc Fleury.
Exadel is likely to get more community support for its tools by open sourcing under JBoss than under its own name. Its Fortunate 500 clients will also find a safe place, a scaled site with experienced people, to take their questions as they move into the open source arena. JBoss and Exadel tools are also complementary.
Then there's the win for the rest of us. Having all these Java and middleware tools in one place, with professional back-up available to either help you build something with them or to do the building entirely, if it's managed at all well it's a very good thing.
And that's the only real risk here. Can this be managed well? When there is free scut-work to do (and there always is) who will do it, RedHat or Exadel? Fleury famously complained of a lack of RedHat support. Was that just a tactic by RedHat to get rid of him (I was once a victim of such a dodge) or is RedHat really a Tom Sawyer outfit, talking others into whitewashing its fence?
Time, as they say, will tell.
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Talkback
Well, since RedHat is open sourcing it, they have to play nice, or we can
So, yes, RedHat does do a good job of getting others to help white-wash the fence, but, the fence if for all to use.
Question is who else?
Who else is there to support JBoss.
IBM will support their free OSS version and charge for support.
BEA will support WebLogic.
Question is who else will support JBoss.
Also will their support be good even after one pays the cash.
As a customer, from my point of view it is no good if I get a refund because my problem was not solved. This requires me to use another middle ware, code changes, impacts cost and schedules.
In theory it sounds good that if RedHat doesnt support, someone else will. However practically it working out is an entire different ballgame and thats reality.
Jboss support
Marc Fluery's next venture, perhaps? ;-)
Anyway, Red Hat has topped polls of CTOs for customer satisfaction two years in a row. Also, JBoss (the corporation) had a pretty good organization.
So there are no worries there.
Besides, the question "Who else is there to support X" can apply to any product or any company. Who else is there to support WebSphere, WebLogic? Who else is there to support ASP.Net applications?
Actually, you're better off with an open source product/company. That means that if Vendor A drops the ball, someone else [b]can[/b] sweep in and pick it up. That can't happen with proprietary products, at least it's much less likely and/or much more costly. And this makes it so the open source support provider [b]has to[/b] provide good support, since it's easy for them to lose your business.
Anyway, Red Hat with JBoss and now with Exadel is shaping up to be pretty hot stuff. And consider JBoss Seam - one of the easiest, most comprehensive JEE frameworks I've seen.
you must be kidding yourself
They are not called DeadRat for nothing.
You should deal with them, their support is LOUSY, the licencing is not as plesant as they make it out to be. Watch them come in take an inventory and give you a bill (that could give you a heart attack) ---> if you ever need support from redhat, you need to have an RHN license for EVERY SERVER IN YOUR NETWORK, otherwise they will deny support.
Anybody is free to download CentOS and offer RedHat Support. Heck, guess
Stop the stupid rants.
wasnt talking about Oracle offering Linux support
However my post was specifically with JBoss in mind.
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"Don't worry, if RedHat does not perform, they will be out of business FAST."
I have no reason to be worried.
Just pointing out RedHat business practices - support is annual subscription basis. If one server doesnt have RHN licence, they do not support (even if the server requiring support has the RHN licence).
Being out of business FAST, that may not be the case, reason being there is a new customer to be made a sucker of.
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"Stop the stupid rants. "
Point out a couple of RedHat policies and all of a sudden its a stupid rant.
Well, if RedHat does not offer good support at a reasonable price, they
There are a lot of people that use JBoss without support, in other words,
The point is, with open source projects, anybody can look at the code and offer support. The fact that there are no other big players supporting JBoss means that RedHat is doing a good job at a reasonable price. If they were not, they would just put other support companies into business.
In free markets, things find an equilibrium!!!
sure, what you say makes sense
Other companies are charging for software licence and they constantly keep adding new features and improving their product offerings. Whats RedHats strategy.
Many companies use JBoss without requiring support. But when they do, RedHat comes in take an inventory of servers running RedHat software and you have to pay a licencing fees on all the computers to get support for just the single computer.
Don't worry, RedHat will go out of business if people do not like the
Red Hat *did* pay Exadel
Red Hat *did* pay Exadel to get the deal done. <br /><br />
"...given that we just paid them a whole bundle of money to get this deal done."<br /><br />
Those are words from Gavin King of JBoss/RH which you can find <a href="http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=44506#228570">here.</a><br /><br />
I don't know for sure, but I'd bet a beer that Red Hat will own the copyrights to the Exadel software. And so, this deal is nothing more than RH buying Exadel's software business.<br /><br />
Not that you'd get that by reading the <a href="http://jboss.com/partners/exadel">Red Hat FAQ on the deal.</a><br /><br />
Savio
http://saviorodrigues.wordpress.com/
RE: Exadel finds a different way to open source
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