I purposely didn’t write about the Exadel partnership when it was announced as I wanted to get some more details on it. A week has passed and little has been written that furthers my understanding. And I must apologize for not emailing someone at JBoss to get some clarification (it’s been busy here). As such, I ask you to read the comments before finishing this post, in case one of my JBoss readers writes in to correct my take on the deal.
Here is the quote from the TSS discussion on this deal:
Sacha Labourey: “The Red Hat and Exadel partnership is twofold. First, Exadel will open source its commercial products — Exadel Studio Pro and RichFaces — at JBoss.org as Red Hat Studio Developer and JBoss RichFaces, respectively. Exadel is also moving its popular Ajax4jsf project, currently hosted on java.net, to JBoss.org, where it will become JBoss Ajax4jsf. Second, Red Hat and Exadel will continue developing the three projects going forward, including integration with existing JBoss platform technologies such as JBoss Seam. This ongoing development will be done under JBoss’s leadership.”
Then, JBoss/RH’s Gavin King comments:
“….. Seems like their (i.e. Exadel – added for clarity by Savio) business has actually worked out pretty damn well, given that we just paid them a whole bundle of money to get this deal done. ;-) This is not a typical case of a commercial vendor deciding to give away a product they couldn’t sell, in a last-ditch attempt to get users. Rather, this is an acquisition of successful technology, for money. It follows the model of JBoss Transactions, which was acquired from Arjuna, and JBoss ESB, which was acquired from Aviva. …..”
Am I off in left field when I think that this is little more than JBoss/RH acquiring technology from Exadel for a price? That the “….decided to open source the products at jboss.org” parts of the announcement are more about the cash that changed hands and less about validation of any community site? Reading Gavin’s comments leads me to think as much.
Don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, acquisitions are a way of life in the software industry.
What doesn’t sit well with me is that the TSS Q&A with Sacha and the JBoss/RH Q&A about the deal don’t really clarify if:
- (A) Exadel decided to open source their products and choose the JBoss/RH community because of its strategic fit with Exadel goals or for whatever reason that Exadel would feel that one ‘community’ is better than another ‘community’
- (B) Exadel was paid to transfer their copyrights to JBoss/RH, and the open sourcing of Exadel products at JBoss/RH was part of the deal
I’m not the expert, but I don’t think that the Apache Software Foundation or Eclipse ever paid a 3rd party to decide to open source a product into the Apache or Eclipse community. When IBM acquired Gluecode, (which was building products on top of Apache Geronimo), we positioned the deal as what it was, an acquisition. Nice and clear.
Can anyone at JBoss/RH shed some light on who owns the copyrights to the code going forward? Because that should be a simple way of knowing if this was a 3rd party endorsing the JBoss/RH community or a 3rd party selling their IP to JBoss/RH.
Either way, it’s a business decision. But I don’t think it’s cool to paint an acquisition of technology as a partnership that endorses a community/external development site.
03.18.07 at 1:52 am
“Because that should be a simple way of knowing if this was a 3rd party endorsing the JBoss/RH community or a 3rd party selling their IP to JBoss/RH.”
Two word for you: false dichotomy. Why can’t it be both?
It is not an true acquisition because we did not buy Exadel, nor hire any Exadel employees. Rather, it is a partnership, because the products will be developed jointly by both companies (primarily by Exadel employees, in fact). However, it is true that we (JBoss) did purchase the IP, which is why I used the word “acquisition” in that quote.
03.20.07 at 8:51 am
Gavin, my issue with the Exadel deal is the positioning (which could totally just have been an oversight on the JBoss/RH marketing end).
If you hadn’t mentioned “we just paid them a whole bundle of money” on TSS, I would have left the JBoss.com and redhat.com websites thinking this deal was really profound.
It would have been the first time (that I’m aware of) that a 3rd party would have decided to open source their IP into the JBoss/RH community (sans cash changing hands). This has happened several times with the ASF or Eclipse communities and would bring you guys into the same level.
Why can’t it be both? Well, because endorsements of a community or any product are difficult to take at face value when there is (significant) cash on the table. Maybe I’ve watched too many TV commercials with athlete endorsements.
03.20.07 at 10:17 am
Not the first time somebody has decided to push something to JBoss.ORG…Have you looked at JBoss ESB? A large Canadian insurance company donated their ESB that had been in production for a few years to JBoss.ORG and this is what JBoss ESB is based upon.
Even more recently is the Hibernate Shards project which was donated by Google.
Farther into the past was the Javassist project. No money exchanged hands, Professor Chiba just needed a home for his stuff and somebody to love it.
03.20.07 at 10:46 am
Bill, I stand corrected. Thanks for the info on Hibernate Shards & Javassist.
I did know about the JBoss ESB, but Gavin’s TSS comment indicated that that was an acquisition more than a donation.
11.14.07 at 2:26 pm
[...] an endorsement of Red Hat’s community. Long-time readers may remember that I questioned the “endorsement of the JBoss community” when Exadel decided to move their development into the JBoss community. I questioned the [...]