Nickname: Jose

Review: Skeptic, First, companies merge for reasons besides them being in trouble. Second, the floss business world goes much much further than Red Hat. Perhaps you are tunneling your vision to companies that are of a particular size or popularity. Red Hat is teeny in the open source world (though big in the mainstream open source business world). Many people have been involved in profitable consultancies or cooperating in open source projects before Red Hat was popular. Red Hat is simply one business trying to make use of the open source that exists and continues to be built. IBM is another one that has had a fair amount of success, though they certainly do closed source too (and have in the past). What you have probably been a bit amazed or confused about is how companies that not long ago completely ignored open source now appear to take it so seriously. But you know the saying: If you can't beat them, join them.

Date reviewed: May 30, 2006 1:34 AM

Nickname: Dr Jayanth G Paraki

Review: Quite a few thinkers who belonged to very divergent schools of thought have been unanimous on one point: If a scientist believes that he has no philosophy and keeps tightly to his "special field," he will really join some "chance philosophy," as A.N.Whitehead puts it. Practically, the separation between science and philosophy can be kept up strictly only during a period in which no essential changes in the principles of science take place. Recognition of the widespread nature of diseases of civilization in our time is obviously a first step to real therapy. The open source movement is an exact science and requires pro-active measures to succeed. Companies that reply purely on products at the exclusion of process-based technologies are endangering themselves and the shareholders. I speak from over 10 years of experience in datamining in life sciences, which is a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide.

Date reviewed: May 28, 2006 1:13 PM

Nickname: mobile-java-guy

Review: There is a great possibility for open Java middleware in mobile with OSGi and JSR 232. Nokia and IBM have been big supporters in this effort, along with Eclipse. Check out JSR 232 and OSGi.org

Date reviewed: May 28, 2006 4:46 AM

Nickname: skeptic

Review: Oracle was buying open source companies to kill them, not promote them. Red Hat and Jboss are the only 2 open source companies with any significant profits, and they are having to merge. Open source may continue to grow, but only because most of its users want something for free, not because it is a good business model.

Date reviewed: May 25, 2006 2:16 AM

Nickname: Dave Rosenberg

Review: I think that the opportunity for open source tools in SOA has just begun. With the exception of ESBs like Mule (mule.codehaus.org) there are not many products focused on the space. The reason I believe this is because SOA tools are expensive. Any tech product that allows for a broad pricing umbrella is ripe for open source to level.

Date reviewed: May 24, 2006 11:36 PM

Nickname: Martin

Review: Red Hat, with its acquisition of JBoss, not only is a threat to Oracle, but also to IBM (they have invested over $1 billion in Linux as an alternative to Windows, which has helped support Red Hat) and its associated middleware that runs on Linux.

Date reviewed: May 24, 2006 3:40 PM

Nickname: Dean

Review: Dave, Thank you for your insights. I have a question and I would love to hear your opinion. Where do you see companies that act as open "middleware" or even "tool" companies play in the SOA, Open Source World? In particular, I have been following Active-Endpoints. Do you have an opinion on companies like this? Please share. Thank you, Dean

Date reviewed: May 24, 2006 2:26 PM