Red Hat to Acquire JBoss

tecker writes "Redhat.com has a banner and press release that states that it will be Red Hat that will buy JBoss and not Oracle as previously thought. The press release states "the world's leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire JBoss, the global leader in open source middleware. By acquiring JBoss, Red Hat expects to accelerate the shift to service-oriented architectures (SOA), by enabling the next generation of web-enabled applications running on a low-cost, open source platform." Could it be that a one company server package that will rival Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 and ASP will finally emerge?"

jboss

why would redhat buy this?
it already was open source right...
can't they just... contribute to it.

Re:jboss

Red Hat wants the support contracts that JBoss has. That is where these companies are trying to make money. I bet that Red Hat will start offering a consolidated support contract that will offer support for both JBoss and Red Hat when you are running JBoss on Red Hat. People who are paying money for JBoss support will be more than willing to push out a couple of bucks for Red Hat support as well.

Red Hat couldn't create their own support group for the JBoss application server because of the complexity of the technology and the lack (and cost of acquiring)of people with the Java skills to understand it in-depth. Also, Red Hat didn't have the reputation of providing world-class support for Java. Now it will.

Re:jboss

Red Hat has a good history of doing nice things for open source projects, or proprietary projects that they bought and made open source. If a big supporter of open source didn't pick up JBoss, Oracle would have killed the project eventually (they have experience doing these things). One cool thing about this is that Red Hat develops GCJ (Gnu Compiler for Java) and they've got it compiling Eclipse and the Java portions of OpenOffice.Org, so I'd venture to guess that this increases the chance of JBoss running natively too which would be interesting.
Regards,
Steve

Re:jboss

"i have to admit i never liked jbosses model, give the users a nice piece of [censored] without proper documentation and then charge for the books and support. the software itself was great when i had the look at it, but the fact that you had to hack around german forums to find out some nice tricks for free, wasn't so tempting."

Exactly what piece of open source sofware have you found that has really well writen documention?

For that matter what piece of closed source software have you found that comes with really good documentation?

Oreilly makes most of it's money by documenting other peoples software.
I don't see any real difference. Heck I spent a good part of friday looking for a fix for Asterisk@home. I found it on a forum on sourceforge after a few hours of searching.
Of course I added it to the wiki but WTH didn't anyone else?

You show me any program that comes with complete documentation, tutorials, and troubleshooting guides please? I would love to see it.

But what are the terms?

Although I think this is an important development for java developers, I can't really see it really being a rival to Server 2003 and ASP, don't get me wrong I hate ASP and M$, but the simple fact is they have a huge market share, that just doesn't want to move, additionally they have legacy.

I would be interested to know more about the terms of the takeover, I remember reading recently that Marc let the Oracle deal drop because if/when he sold out he wanted his terms and conditions to be met.

Re:But what are the terms?

Having been burnt on his first startup, I suspect that Marc got pretty good terms on the deal. JBoss has been running in the black, and their connections with some big clients could help Red Hat get more service contracts. I think that the acquisition makes sense, because it will help push Red Hat into the high end service area even more (i.e. where the real money is). I do wonder how well Red Hat will be able to manage the diverse group of people working for JBoss. I am sure that not all of them will be happy with the buyout. Considering the international nature of JBoss workforce, I suspect the Red Hat might have some difficulties managing them.

Re:But what are the terms?

PHP has an even bigger market share, by your logic they should have bought Zend. Well designed systems that are harder to master, like Rails, JBoss and ASP.Net won't drive the trivially easy web languages like ASP and PHP out of business, but there's room for everyone.

Redhat to aquire JBoss

So they are not buying Oracle then - settling for JBoss must be a bit of a dissapointment.

Wow

I didn't know RedHat was going to buy oracle....... ;)

What does this mean for Mono?

Given that the biggest Linux vendor is going with a J2EE application server are there any implications for Mono and its associated application stack?

In another topic it was pointed out that Novell are not doing particularly well with Linux. Given that they employ a number of Mono hackers are there any implications for Novell and said hackers?

Grammer Nazi

that states that it will be Red Hat that will buy JBoss and not Oracle as previously thought.

I read this, and thought there was speculation that Red Hat was considering purchasing Oracle. Now THAT would have been front page-worthy news.

Would it...

... give RedHat an instant "in" on the application server market so coveted by BEA and IBM? This seems like it could be an intersting fit, and would certainly save JBoss from extinction by Oracle (as seems to be the trend).

And?

How does this change anything? Red Hat could have packaged JBoss in Red Hat without purchasing it. Why do two open source products need to be owned by a single company to "rival Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 and ASP"?

Are they now going to benefit from being able to control the direction of JBoss? No. JBoss is an implementation of the J2EE standard.

The only advantage I can see is that they will now have JBoss experts who can tightly integrate the server with the OS (like IIS). But I have to think they could've done that by paying someone to do it for a far cry of the price of purchasing JBoss.

Sounds like a good deal.

Sounds like money well spent. The site's not even linked from TFA yet jboss.org [jboss.org] won't respond to page loads. Very confidences inpiring from a web technology company.

It's a good day for RHAT

..well at least a good day if you own RHAT stock, it is up nearly 10% (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=rhat [yahoo.com]). Let's see what happens at the end of the day.

Makes sense for a service organization to do this

Red Hat already had some enterprise Java stuff, but the middleware component just puts the icing on the cake. I think Red Hat is simply using this purchase to officially add this to their portfolio. By portfolio, I don't mean "software products", I mean their service offerings. The software has been, and will continue to be, free. It's the brains behind the operation that cost companies money. In fact, Red Hat probably already had engineers who were paid to support customers running Jboss, but now they are the "unofficial official" place to go when you want enterprise, corporate support for Jboss.

It's past time to stop looking at Red Hat as a software company and start looking at them as a service organization. This isn't surprising considering the success their RTP neighbor, Cisco, had as a service organization (and you probably thought they were a network hardware vendor all this time).

ibm

would be the company that doesnt like this the most. Hp will not care that much, but going up against websphere......

SOA, the 2.0 silver bullet

By acquiring JBoss, Red Hat expects to accelerate the shift to service-oriented architectures (SOA), by enabling the next generation of web-enabled applications running on a low-cost, open source platform.

Ack, buzz word overload. By SOA let's assume the writer really means SOAP services. Microsoft's offering for these is ASP.Net and the WSE extensions, ASP simply isn't that good at generating or consuming SOAP. And once you open up your applications to everyone by using a SOAP service then all lock in is gone, and this works both ways. No longer do corporates have to stick to Java or ASP.Net, they can mix and match. You'd hope that this would enable people to concentrate on the best way to do things, but no, it'll just end up in a language pissing match again, thus ensuring the lovely ideals behind SOA go out the window.

JBoss Microsoft Agreement

I wonder how this will play with the JBoss and Microsoft [com.com] agreement that was made in September. That deal was for Microsoft to work with JBoss so that JBoss can run better on MS servers. Clearly, having JBoss run better on Microsoft servers is against the interests of Red Hat.

Good for Java technologies?

With Redhat being pretty much the leader in the corporate Linux world, this will hurt Oracle and boost JBoss... it's time for me to start reading up on JBoss [tinyurl.com]. Could this be the start of the re-emergence of Java technologies at the forefront?

Who will trust it?

It may well emerge as a product to rival ASP and Microsoft's Windows Server 2003,
but the big question is, who will place their trust in it?

The product may be excellent, but it needs to be tried, tested and verified in the field before [INSERT MAJOR CORPORATION] will even consider integrating it into their [INSERT ERP/MIS/Whatever] system.

Bill Grates

... Could it be that a one company server package that will rival Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 and ASP will finally emerge ...

Who knows, perhaps at some point in the future we might find microsoft complaining about anti-trust?

$350m

According to this [silicon.com] "Linux distributor Red Hat said on Monday that it signed an agreement to buy open source company JBoss for at least $350m, a move that expands Red Hat's product line and adds to its growth potential."

$350m sounds alot! Altough 40 per cent cash and 60 per cent Red Hat stock!

Basic English

Okay, I know I'm going to have to rebuild some karma here, but it's got to be said.

""Redhat.com has a banner and press release that states that it will be Red Hat that will buy JBoss and not Oracle as previously thought.

I agree when people say that basic problems with grammar and spelling are not a big deal on a place like slashdot. But when faulty grammar leads to a complete misinterpretation of the situation, you have to fix it.

This line says that somebody thought Red Hat was going to buy Oracle.

When your grammar becomes an impediment to understanding, it's time to work on it.

Missing Link

In order to run JBoss on RHEL you'll typically have to install someone's JDK - Sun's or IBM's (or even BEA's JRockit). Cue long discussion regarding open sourcing Java... I wonder how they intend to handle that gap when it comes to packaging and support.

I think this is a better result for JBoss and it's users than Oracle would have been. Still, I think Red Hat will have fun coping with some of the personalities in the JBoss line-up - I wish them luck!

Hmm, doesn't look like I'll be able to get to the JBoss forums today.

gcj

I assume this is good news for GCJ and/or Classpath, given Red Hat's committment to free software. Surely they will now devote many resources to making JBoss work reliably on Free Java, then we all win!

No, it can't...

Could it be that a one company server package that will rival Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 and ASP will finally emerge?

No it won't. They are two very different things. ASP classic was "for dummies" and ASP.NET is all about the framework (Web Forms) and the tools. (Visual Studio) On top of that, JBoss is .com terretory while .NET is the darling of the enterprise. There is some overlap, but I think that it's a pretty good generalisation of the markets.

Don't get we wrong, ASP.NET is very capable in good hands, but at the same time, "dummies" can work with it too. The same can't be said about J2EE/EJB or even straight JSP.

Java?

enabling the next generation of web-enabled applications running on a low-cost, open source platform.

Unless it's running on gcj, kaffe, sablevm or the likes, then it's not really an open source platform, is it? And potentially not low-cost in the future.

I am both happy and disappointed

Happy that RH and not Oracle is buying JBoss, but disappointed that if you want to listen to RH's webcast of the press conference (going on right now, BTW), you must have either....wait for it....WiMP or Real Player! To add insult to injury, here's the company that's hosting the web cast: HEAD http://phx.corporate-ir.net/ [corporate-ir.net] 200 OK Cache-Control: private Connection: close Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 15:36:06 GMT Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 Content-Length: 14287 Content-Type: text/html Client-Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 15:36:06 GMT X-Powered-By: ASP.NET *sigh*

RedHat trying to squeeze out Novell

Looks like RedHat is trying to do Novell one better. And maybe now that Novell-JBoss partnership arrangement won't get renewed?

http://www.novell.com/products/support/jboss/ [novell.com]
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1843829,00.as p [eweek.com]

Answers

Could it be that a one company server package that will rival Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 and ASP will finally emerge?

Short Answer: No.

Long Answer: Yes. It is going to take a lot more than the purchase of one relatively small company (when compared to the size of Microsoft). I believe it's a long road ahead before Microsoft will be debunked. I do believe that one day it'll happen, just not as fast as some might hope.

Slashdot-Enabled Comment

Can we ease up on "enabled" or at least restrict it to one use per sentence.

In the name of knowledgeably reading replies...

What, exactly, is JBoss?

Will JBoss go the way of CCVS

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/ccvs/ [redhat.com]

JBoss might be a different product and different market but it makes me wonder if JBoss with end up like CCVS. Red Hat purchased another opensource project/product a while ago called CCVS( Credit Card Verification System ) and converted it to their proprietary license before later killing the product couple years later. They told their existing customers they'd be supported til the end of their contract by a 3rd party( mainstreetsoftworks.com ) and that MainStreet Works had a replacement product( also proprietary ).

If you've ever looked for GNU/Linux based CC processing software, you know how long and unsuccessful the search was/is.

There's definately a larger market for JBoss but the results could be the same in the long run if Red Hat can't market the product to profits. They are not a friend to Open Source when they do these kinds of things and it also shows/helps Microsoft when they do this... IMO.

LoB

Re:Will JBoss go the way of CCVS

Red Hat purchased another opensource project/product a while ago called CCVS( Credit Card Verification System ) and converted it to their proprietary license before later killing the product couple years later.

Heh, that's not exactly how it went.

The original product implemented communications protocols that were owned by financial institutions.

These protocols were under heavy NDA. As a result, there was never a release of CCVS under any open soruce license. Red Hat wanted to open up the whole thing, but that would have been a violation of our contracts with those financial institutions.

In addition, there was a rigorous certificaiton process required for any software that did this stuff -- if anyone did modify the software we distributed, it would have been in violation of the finanical institutions rules to actually use it without going through a rigorous and time-consuming certification process for basically every single change to a line of code.

How do I know? Basically, I'm the guy who wrote it.

(There was more than one of us, but I designed the whole thing, and wrote the infrastructure parts, all of the telecom modules, and some of the protocol modules and language adapters. Other people wrote some protocol modules that plugged into my code, some of our language adapters, and one guy wrote our database layer.)

Some CCVS trivia:

• I ported it to PalmOS over a three day weekend once, so we'd be able to actually show it while walking around at trade shows.
• On the floor of a trade show (ALS '98?), at our booth, I ported it to the Corel Netwinder in about 15 minutes. (Yes, that was trickier than typing "make" -- if I can ever open up the source code, I can show you why.)
• Our first customer ever, and I think the only one to use the original "1.0" release of the software, was LinuxMall. Remember them? If you ordered stuff from them over the web in the mid-to-late 90s, odds are your credit card number went through my code.
• It wasn't strictly a Linux product. We had it running on SunOS, SCO, AIX, DigitalUnix, you name it. Internally, we even had it running on NeXTstep, and on Apple's "prelude to rhapsody", and on beta versions of MacOS X. If Red Hat had taken slightly longer to cancel it, we might have owned the (tiny) MacOS point-of-sale market. But it never ran on Windows.
• We made our APIs available for: C, TCL, Perl, PHP, Python, and Java. Yes, we were commercially supporting financial transaction processing APIs for all of those languages back in the 90s.

(You'll have to pardon me for going on like that. I'm kinda proud of what our little company managed to accomplish.)

Which reminds me: anyone from Red Hat (or with contacts at Red Hat) reading this? I'd love to get that source code back!

I believe I know how to make it open source today, and I'd like to take a stab at it -- and at porting it directly to today's 2.5G and 3G cell phones.

But, legally, Red Hat owns that source code, and I do not have the legal right to try to open it up without their say-so. I have been able to get responses from the folks at Main Street Softworks, but they don't have the CCVS source code or rights to it either.

Competition

Why would I want to use JBoss instead of Oracle's own Java app server? Or Apache's?

Fedora Core?

How long before we start seeing JBoss packages in Fedora Core installs, like we are seeing Eclipse and Xen being rolled out? Seems like they run everything through Fedora first, just to shake out the integration glitches and get as many people jumping on it as possible. (Open Source Beta Testers!)

I wonder if they will build it on the SUN JVM, or on the GNU JVM that currently ships with Fedora.

USPTO rewards structure is flawed.

My girlfriends brother was looking into a job at the USPTO. I said, "that's cool, you should start rejecting almost everything as most are so damn obvious. He replied that would be stupid for him to do as he gets a "bonus" for every 1000 or so patents he "puts through."

Phew! That was a close one!

...Red Hat that will buy JBoss and not Oracle as previously thought.

I'm SOOO relieved Red Hat will not be buying Oracle at this time!
I can't imagine RedHat shipping a non-GPL database at this time.

This is a major advance for Red Hat.

The acquisition of JBoss is a big step forward for Red Hat because it puts them squarely in the middleware market which they lacked before. Not only does it head off a likely purchase/shutdown by Oracle of JBoss, it vaults Red Hat over such companies as BEAS in a key market sector. This is why, (for those who pay attention to such things) Red Hat stock moved up on Monday, and will probably move considerably higher. RHAT is a very strong company now and this makes it stronger. All the better to keep Microsoft and Oracle at bay.