lxer.com — Most Linux people don't know much about JBoss, the open source firm reported in talks with Oracle about a $400 million purchase. JBoss did it without any initial outside funding, generated revenue and self-funded and stayed true to open source 100% while selling services.
Feb 23, 2006 View in Crawl 4
garyedwardsFeb 23, 2006
There are many who write about Open Source, forever arguing, postulating and theorizing about "success". The challenge of building both community and economic value. And then there are those who just do it. I for one am most thankful that the armies of theorist and postulators can now write about how it's done. Thanks Tom for not only walking us through this stunning blueprint for FLOSS success, but also for challenging and changing the open source discussion. I wonder if the "Society of Pundits and Pontificators Who Get It" has heard the clarion wake up call of the JBoss blueprint?I hope that important FLOSS communities like my beloved OpenOffice.org can rise to the occasion and learn from the JBoss blueprint. I would be very interested in how you rated OOo using the JBoss Maturity model and blueprint of software, support, documentation, training, community participation, integration and professional services. If i hear you right, it would appear as if Sun has missed the boat by trying to introduce two competing products based on the same code base, OOo and SO?Maybe what Sun should be doing is consolidating everything behind the OOo product, and offering professional services and support based on entirely on OpenOffice.org? I know there are many in Sun who who would support that, and perhaps the JBoss story will help them to make their case. There are still those in Hamburg who passionately and with great determination continue to carry the torch for StarOffice. They are motivated still by the original Marco Boerries vision that it will be StarOffice that cracks open the iron fisted grip of Microsoft Office. I'm all for inspired motivation. But i also believe there are tactics and strategies of war that work. And there are those that don't. +1 the JBoss blueprint. And thanks for making the case,~ge~
tadelsteFeb 23, 2006Submitter
Gary, you're welcome. I'd like to repeat what I wrote in the article: Few examples exist. Marc Fleury proved it can work. He started alone in his in-laws garage and worked until he had a product to show others. Then, he went on the road by himself to teach developers. Then he got some help. It's about community. His community responded by manning the help desk - so to speak.Now that we have a good example, I hope others will follow it. I suppose that's the point of writing the article in the first place. Fleury let me come around so I could see it close up and personal.
geekygirlFeb 24, 2006
JBoss is a great example of an open source project / company whose product is used frequently in enterprise environments. JBoss, MySQL, Zend, and other open source companies are becoming more and more well known within corporate environments.One additional point on your article:Although JBoss started without any initial funding in 1999, I did not see you mention the $10 million in venture capital that they raised in 2004.<a class="user" href="http://news.com.com/JBoss+lands+10+million+in+funding/2100-1014_3-5161753.html">http://news.com.com/JBoss+lands+10+million+in+funding/2100-1014_3-5161753.html</a>
tadelsteFeb 24, 2006Submitter
GeekyGirl: They told me that they only did it to get a stock evaluation and they put the money in the banks and never touched it.
andyoFeb 24, 2006
I do think JBoss can be an inspiration for the projects Tom mentioned (OOo, GNOME, Mozilla) but you have to recognize they face much bigger challenges in reaching out to users. Experienced Java developers are a much more highly trained and narrow community than the wide range of potential users for office suites, desktops, and interactive document-display software. You have to reach a new, very challenging level of empathy and patience to bring information about end-user products to those users. But it needs to be done.