Comments on: Exadel Partnership – A Rose By Any Other Name

By: Red Hat & Hyperic Finally Made Me Happy « rand($thoughts);

Red Hat & Hyperic Finally Made Me Happy « rand($thoughts); — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:26:49 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: Savio Rodrigues

Savio Rodrigues — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 15:46:09 +0000

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.

By: Bill Burke

Bill Burke — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 15:17:04 +0000

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.

By: Savio Rodrigues

Savio Rodrigues — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 13:51:22 +0000

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.

By: Gavin

Gavin — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 06:52:20 +0000

“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.