if you’ve been paying attention even a minutia to the tech industry the past month or so you may have heard that redhat has acquired jboss (aka my employer). i honestly didn’t think working for jboss could get any better, but apparently i’ve been proven wrong!!
i don’t even know where to start on this entry honestly as i’ve been holding back for a good amount of time (nearly 2 months!) due to legalities. what can i say? some of the coolest things that come immediately to mind:
- - i work for REDHAT
- - i had previously applied/desperately dreamed of working for redhat approx. 5-6 years ago… it’s amazing what can happen in that time
- - i have direct access to developers like alan cox and havoc pennington, just to name a few….
- - redhat has been seriously working hard on improving GNU Classpath, gcj, Eclipse 3.x, and more for linux
- - having the email address marshall _at_ redhat _dot_ com is my wet dream
- - i work for REDHAT
- - jboss is working as an independent division of redhat. a lot of people have told me this is common “acquisition speak”, but i recieved a shirt this week that specifically states “JBoss, a division of Redhat”. shirts don’t lie, people
- - i get all kinds of awesome redhat swag for free. see red fedora.
- - redhat and jboss together are going to make for one hell of an open source company. they are both leaders and innovators in the open source software space. they are both also by far the most succesful. if a more perfect match could be made, i’d be hard pressed to find it.
- - we’ve got IBM, BEA, Novell, Microsoft, and Oracle shaking in their boots…
- - my mother knows redhat by name, and that’s just cool
4 Comments Received
This is all good, my son. Well, all except the part bout IBM and Microsoft shaking in their boots.
1. IBM has a big stake in RedHat. So, ultimately, what’s good for RedHat is also good for Big Blue. I am, of course, oversimplifying the Application Server competition between JBoss and WebSphere.
2. Microsoft doesn’t shake in their boots any more. They’re just too big to be afraid. Do they sit up and take notice? Absolutely. That just means that RedHat/JBoss will be an even more focused target for Microsoft in their campaign against Open Source (which they have declared as The Great Evil of computing, LOL).
In the end, though, there will always be room for innovation and healthy competition. Eventually, I hope the Cathedral crumbles into the Bazaar, but only in a safe, sane and manageable way that doesn’t turn the entire world topsy-turvy sending users scrambling for support or faced with the urgent need to switch or be lost.
All hail the free market. All hail Open Source. Long live Microsoft.
Love ya,
Dad
We really need to pimp out these fedoras for jboss world. We totally need more ideas. Totally. I mean, TOTALLY!
Oh and also, HELLO FATHER CULPEPPER!
Ooooo.. all the sexy geeks in fedoras!
First ones who learn hat tricks gets a prize!
Hey guys .. when did my blog suddenly become an active discussion area?
Not that I’m complaining, just usually it’s like an echo chamber in here :).
To dad:
1. IBM is a big complex company (just like Microsoft, BEA, etc..) so of course there is a little what we call “coopetition”.. but you left out quite a few areas where Redhat/JBoss and IBM are competing directly: AIX vs RHEL, WSAD vs JBossIDE, Geronimo+WS vs JBossAS, etc etc
2. Microsoft (like many of the old school software companies) isn’t stupid, I think they see the software industry changing all around them and are trying like hell to figure out a way to keep their business model viable after software becomes commodotized. There are tons of examples of MS cozying up with open source vendors/developers for “community PR” and other reasons. You are probably right that they are not proverbially “shaking in their boots”, but we are making them nervous, and I think I like that
RE: Users scrambling…
I think a predominantly open source software industry would be nothing but good for users. As open source software companies are growing, we are finding that the services business model works, and can scale (see redhat with approx 1500-1600 employees, not gigantic, but nothing you can sneeze at). With this kind of business model ruling the industry, users will of course be supported :). Also, we are seeing the same “standards” of long-term software support in the open source industry now that Microsoft, IBM, etc have traditionally had in the past.
In my ideal world Microsoft wouldn’t “go away” really, they would just be changed. I don’t hate Microsoft, I just think that their business model doesn’t deliver nearly as much value to their customers. I want a software industry where reusability and openness are a given.
So yes, Microsoft is dead. Long live Microsoft
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