Kristian Rink wrote:
> Folks;
>
> I'm sure no one really would want to deal with this question at this time,
> but as I frequently stumbled across this in discussions with fellow
> developers the last couple of days, I feel the need to, well, "put the
> finger to a wound" asking what perspectives Glassfish might have given it
> really should happen that IBM might acquire Sun sooner or later... I see
> that IBM folks, actually, do have a bunch of software offerings addressing
> the same target group Glassfish does address, and from that point of view
> the current situation of uncertainty (will or will not Glassfish /SJSAS be
> continued in case of Sun being acquired by IBM) is surely to some extend
> hurting the adoption and public perception of Glassfish.
Hi Kristian,
I think as of now there is no reason to jump to any conclusions. First
of all: We simply do not know what is going to happen. We can guess this
and reason about that but in the end we have to wait whether the deal
goes through and if so, what IBM is going to do.
I also think that realising your apps in a Java EE compliant way is a
safe way to do. GlassFish is the reference implementation and this is
not going to change. But even when - should the very worst happen - IBM
should at some point in the future decide to drop GlassFish or to make
it a commercial-only option any EE compliant app should be easily
portable to other servers - though I, of course, hope that this won't be
necessary.
My recommendation is to simply stick to GlassFish. Keep testing it, keep
reporting issues, keep asking and answering questions and thus keep
making GlassFish better. This is probably the best way to guarantee
GlassFish's future.
--
Wolfram Rittmeyer
>
> I know that, overally, in a situation of "business issues" like the given
> one, reliable statements are pretty difficult (if possible at all), but
> given Glassfish is an open source project, I wonder whether the application
> server would be capable of, say, even surviving "being axed by IBM" as an
> open-source project (or, eventually, a fork) driven forth by the community
> behind it. Put another way: Is there any "Plan B" of what would happen in
> case Sun gets sold to Big Blue and they decide to end spending money on
> Project Glassfish? What are your thoughts? Any perspectives to eventually
> compensate for the given situation of uncertainty about that?
>
> Cheers & all the best,
> Kristian
>